A: If you can answer “yes” to the questions below:

• Did you start smoking cigarettes as a child?
• Did you smoke for more than 20 years?
• Have you quit smoking now?
• Do you have a cigarette-smoke related cancer, disease or illness, diagnosed by a doctor in the past couple years?

A: No. 

The courts have made it more difficult in recent years to file class action suits against Big Tobacco Companies because the class is so big, involving millions of victims nationwide. As a result, tobacco lawsuits are filed on behalf of an individual and/or their family, and each is considered as a separate claim. Generally, to file a lawsuit, the person suing (the Plaintiff) must have been addicted to cigarettes as a child, relied on the Tobacco Companies lies that cigarette smoke is not harmful, moved to Filters, Lights, Low-Tar or Menthol cigarettes, and then finally quit smoking sometime before he or she was diagnosed with a cigarette smoke related cancer, disease or illness.

A: No. 

Back near the year 2000, the Attorney Generals from 52 states and territories agreed to the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement. That agreement provided that Tobacco Companies would pay billions to the various States and Territories for all the medical and hospital costs of smoking related cancers, illnesses and diseases that cigarette smoke had caused for citizens in those States and Territories.
However, individuals that were addicted as children to cigarettes and have come down, decades later, with a cigarette-smoke related cancer, disease or illness, can still sue. The Tobacco Companies fight each and every lawsuit, hoping that by fighting each lawsuit they will deter people from suing (and also to deter the lawyers that help the injured people too) by making the process too long, stressful, costly and risky. With millions of victims still suffering and dying from lung cancer due to smoking, there are potentially millions of lawsuits that could be filed. Many lawyers are simply too intimidated by the Tobacco Companies and having to take every client’s case to trial, then continue litigating for years while the Tobacco Companies appeal any jury verdict up to the State’s highest Supreme Court; or up to the United States Supreme Court.

A: No.

The relatively strong warnings that we see on cigarette packaging today were not mandated by the government until 1998, but by then, millions were already addicted. Before that, warnings were vague and ineffectual: The Federal Cigarette Labeling and Advertising Act of 1965 required that the warning “Caution: Cigarette Smoking May Be Hazardous to Your Health” be placed in small print on one of the side panels of each cigarette package. This was not enough to deter people from smoking, or to adequately warn about the health risks known to the tobacco companies but hidden from the public.
Further, 95% of smokers started as children. The Tobacco Companies knew that, and their internal documents focus on the “youth market” and children “replacement smokers.” Tobacco Companies, from their testing on rats and mice, knew that cigarette smoke, due to nicotine in the smoke, changes and re-wires the human brain. Children were addicted to cigarette smoke long before they ever saw a warning. Further, once people were addicted, the Tobacco Companies purposefully created “Doubt.” The Tobacco Companies spent billions telling the American Public that cigarette smoke was not proven to be harmful. And the American Public believed them, as from the 1950s to the 2000s, that vast majority of American’s lived in a smoke-filled society in their workplaces, restaurants, movie theaters, places of leisure, airplane, trains, buses and taxi cabs. How could people truly believe cigarette smoke was harmful when the American Public let their babies, young children, and the old and aged, sit in smoke-filled public places.

A: No.

95% of people start smoking as children. Tobacco Companies knew that, and spent billions advertising and marketing to children, despite knowing that nicotine changes and re-wires the human brain for addiction. Smoking is not a choice for children, but a compulsion due to a re-wired brain. Tobacco Companies intentionally marketed to young people and teens, using sexy and fun imagery to convey the idea that smoking was exciting and cool. Think of the Marlboro Man and the cartoon Joe Camel in cigarette ads, or even Sean Connery’s James Bond or Audrey Hepburn on the big screen, looking glamorous through clouds of smoke. A much more insidious tactic involved handing out free sample packs of cigarettes to children as young as eight years old. Their plan—-a successful one as it turns out—-was to turn these children into addicts and lifelong tobacco consumers.

Executives at Big Tobacco knew they had to keep smokers hooked and actively fought back against information that showed smoking was bad for your health. In 1964, after reading the Surgeon General’s Report on the dangers of smoking, internal communications at the highest levels at Philip Morris International revealed a chilling plan: “We must in the near future give smokers a psychological crutch and a self-rationale to continue smoking.”

In 1972, the Vice-President of the Tobacco Institute (a front group paid for by the Big Tobacco Companies) wrote internally to the Tobacco Companies that their fraud on the American Public was working well. “For twenty years, this industry has employed a single strategy to defend itself on three major fronts – litigation, politics and public opinion. While the strategy was brilliantly conceived and executed… it is not – nor was it intended to be – a vehicle for victory. On the contrary, it has always been a holding strategy, consisting of: Creating doubt about the health charge without actually denying it.”
In the 1980s and 1990s Tobacco Companies fought against public smoking bans in workplaces and smoking bans on airplanes, trains and buses. In 1994, the top 7 Tobacco Company corporate executives testified in front of Congress, all saying that cigarettes smoke is not harmful and that cigarettes are not addictive.

According to the industry watchdog, Expose Tobacco, the industry “ran deceptive campaigns, misled policymakers even when under oath, and paid for biased research to help create confusion. The longer the truth was withheld, the more people smoked, unaware of the damage it was causing to their bodies.”

Millions of people have fallen victim to the deceptive marketing practices of tobacco companies and have paid a deadly price.

The longer the truth was withheld, the more people smoked, unaware of the damage it was causing to their bodies.” Further, millions of non-smokers said in clouds of toxic cigarette smoke on airplanes, buses, subways, at work and at restaurants. Those non-smokers believed the Tobacco Companies’ lies, that cigarette smoke was not dangerous. Yet, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) estimates that over 40,000 never-smokers in the USA, die a year from health problems caused by secondhand smoke exposure.

In sum, millions of people, smokers and non-smokers have fallen victim to the deceptive marketing practices and lies of the Tobacco Companies and have paid a deadly price. Toxic Cigarette Smoke is the #1 preventable cause of disease and death in the United States. Over 400,000 past smokers die a year and over 40,000 never smokers die a year in the USA. Tobacco’s lies have created a 50 year epidemic of addiction, disease, disability and death.

A: No.

Menthol cigarettes were invented and designed by the tobacco industry because research showed they were easier for children and women to smoke. Menthol numbs the cough reflex, which allowed even people who were sensitive to regular cigarettes to take up smoking. This is yet another example of how Big Tobacco actively sought to “recruit” children smokers.
Marketing of menthol cigarettes was heavily targeted towards women at first, and then African American children, since studies showed that 85% of Black smokers preferred menthol cigarettes.
Menthol enhances nicotine’s addictiveness and the flavor makes the cigarettes “easier” to use and because of this, Tobacco Companies called Menthol cigarettes great “starter products.”

A: No.

The Tobacco Companies created Filtered cigarettes, Low-Tar cigarettes and “Light” and “Ultra-Light” cigarettes as a deceptive way to keep smokers smoking. The Tobacco Companies had internal studies showing Light and Low-Tar cigarettes were sucked and breathed deeper into the lungs, where the toxic smoke was able to penetrate deeper into the lung tissues and blood stream. So the Tobacco Companies were able to lie to the American Public in two different ways. First, by lying that cigarette smoke was not harmful. (Which the American Public believed as cigarette smoke was nearly universal in public places). And, second, by promoting products which promised an healthier and safer alternative by the marketing and advertising of “light” and “low-tar” cigarettes. This fit the Tobacco Companies’ main goal of “Creating doubt about the health charge without actually denying it.”

A: Tobacco Companies have been sued since the 1950s.

However, from the 1950s to about the year 2000, the Tobacco Companies never lost a case in court because they lied. They could lie because all of their internal documents (which showed all of their lies, fraud and conspiracy) were buried and hidden by the Tobacco Company lawyers. As part of the Master Settlement Agreement with the States around the year 2000, the Tobacco Companies had to disclose millions of pages of internal records showing their deception, such as the Tobacco Companies’ focus on getting free cigarettes into the hands of children, targeting children as replacement smokers, that the “youth market” means children; paying off doctors and scientist as pro-smoking advocates, manufacturing ‘Doubt’ that smoke is not harmful as a why to keep addicted smokers smoking; manufacturing ‘Doubt’ as a way to keep non-smokers sitting in clouds of smoking on airplanes, buses, workplaces and restaurants; along with hundreds of other lies which contributed to the United States of American being a smoke-filled society.
In fact, a federal judge in 2006, Judge Gladys Kessler, reviewing these damning internal documents, wrote that the Tobacco Industry could have never committed such a massive scheme of fraud and deception without the help of its lawyers using legal confidentially and privilege to hide internal documents.
After the year 2000, the Tobacco Companies internal documents can be used in court. This helps balance the scales of justice, so that juries can actually see what the Tobacco Companies knew – and then how the Tobacco Companies told the American Public exactly the opposite.
For the past 20 years the Tobacco Companies’ plan of attack in Court is to: (1) Attack and blame the sick and dying former-smoker person bringing the lawsuit (the Plaintiff) and, (2) although, the Tobacco Companies publicly denied that smoke was harmful and that nicotine is addictive, they blame the former smoker for “knowing that smoke was dangerous and for not trying hard enough to quit sooner.”
Essentially, the Tobacco Companies ask the Jury to ignore all their lies and intentional fraud in the pursuit of profit and money (along with the millions of people sickened and families harmed) to blame the Plaintiff for actually following and believing “the Doubt” manufactured by Tobacco Companies using billions of dollars in advertising and front-groups.