14 July 1999

Up In Smoke - THE COMMENTARY

By Joseph Planta

Cigarette’s are addictive, destructive and probably the worst pack of stuff to buy for five bucks, or whatever the hell they cost nowadays. With the recent court decision out of Florida, making cigarette manufacturers liable for a minimum of $500 billion in tobacco related damages, one has to take the headlines with a grain of salt. Holding manufacturers responsible for their product won’t really get rid of cigarettes. If companies lose money, then more relentless will be their efforts to get new smokers hooked. The case from which this settlement stems, is a class action lawsuit and even though it’s for $500 billion dollars that figure usually becomes smaller after the loose ends are tied up. If we make cigarette makers pay up for tobacco related damages, then we should make video game makers responsible for violence that stems from these video games. How about making candy makers like Hershey or Nestle responsible for diabetic-related damages across the continent?

Any thing that remotely damages the creditability of cigarette makers from this case, is only upon their creditability. So, how many people hooked to hell on cigarettes are going to care about Brown and Williamson’s reliability, when all they care about is a drag. This money is, of course necessary for the strain on Florida’s healthcare system, which has spent nearly the same amount of money treating tobacco related illness in that state. How about personal responsibility? How about the smokers who made the lifestyle choice to fool around with cigarettes? Shouldn’t they be held responsibility for the damage they inflict on themselves?

They should, but the case was also about the way these cigarette makers conducted their work. They purposefully misled the public and tampered with their products to make them more addictive. With B.C.’s class action lawsuit up in court in the very near future, controversy will remain and the issue of stopping smoking will never get fixed. Is this the start of the eradication of the crappy habit? After all that, $500 billion dollars is practically a drop in the bucket.

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