It seems everyday you read about another lawsuit where the cigarette manufacturers are being dinged with a billion here, and billion there in lawsuit judgements, awarded by juries to plantiffs claiming they didn’t know cigarettes were bad for you or highly addictive.
How do cigarette manufacturers in the US continue top stay in business in the face of these back breaking jury awards?
iirc the U.S is beans to the tobacco industry. The real money for them comes from the asian market. China alone with a billion people and something like half of them being smokers.
I think the only reason they’re in the U.s is because the best tobacco is grown here.
Also, most of these huge damage awards get cut down to something more reasonable by appeals courts.
I think it’s only a matter of time before the “I didn’t know it was bad for me” argument is going to stop working. What kind of idiot born since the 1960’s in the USA hasn’t heard and seen the warnings and evidence? To a certain extent I can understand WWII veterans who were given loads of free cigarettes not being aware back then, but there’s no excuse for people who’ve started smoking since the early '60s. (When did the Surgeon General’s warning begin to appear on packs?)
By raising the price after every award.
Even if a pack of smokes cost ten bucks, people would still shell out the money to feed their addictions.
I believe it was much later. Altho everyone should have known for decades the ills of smoking, the cigarette industry engaged in a very active campaign of prevaricating propaganda. I’ve heard spokespersons for the industry within the last decade stating in the media that smoking is not harmful. The industry hid the results of testing showing to the contrary and engaged in a pernicious and pervasive campaign to delude the public. This is where the cigarette industry differs from other similar suits, such as the “McDonald’s,” which never engaged in deceit, lies, and fraud as the cigarette industry has.