Tobacco Escapes Huge Penalty -WP

[Rose Siding]

U.S. Seeks $10 Billion Instead of $130 Billion
Wednesday, June 8, 2005; Page A01

After eight months of courtroom argument, Justice Department lawyers abruptly upset a landmark civil racketeering case against the tobacco industry yesterday by asking for less than 8 percent of the expected penalty.

As he concluded closing arguments in the six-year-old lawsuit, Justice Department lawyer Stephen D. Brody shocked tobacco company representatives and anti-tobacco activists by announcing that the government will not seek the $130 billion that a government expert had testified was necessary to fund smoking-cessation programs. Instead, Brody said, the Justice Department will ask tobacco companies to pay $10 billion over five years to help millions of Americans quit smoking.

Before it was cut, the cessation program was the most significant financial penalty still available to the government as part of its litigation, which had been the largest civil racketeering and conspiracy case in U.S. history. The government contended that six tobacco companies engaged in a 50-year conspiracy to defraud and addict smokers and then conceal the dangers of cigarettes.

"We were very surprised," said Dan Webb, lawyer for Altria Group's Philip Morris USA and the coordinating attorney in the case. "They've gone down from $130 billion to $10 billion with absolutely no explanation. It's clear the government hasn't thought through what it's doing."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/07/AR2005060702019.html

[LiberallyInclined]

1. "It's clear the government hasn't thought through what it's doing."

wanna bet?

[Jammer]

BUY Mo stock?

[Toots]

12. You would support an industry of death for a little more money?

Greed is Good.....right?

[Beetwasher]

11. They Know EXACTLY What They're Doing, They Thought It Through Quite Well

Indeed.

[housewolf]

2. Chalk up 1 more pro-business,

anti-people policy

[Dover]

3. I feel pretty certain Tobaco co.s bought their way out of this one...

backroom deals, no doubt. Wonder what the payoff is?

[dArKeR]

6. I feel pretty certain Tobacco is the source that went after Clinton

As I remember it was Clinton who put the prosecution/enforcement into motion against American Whore Tobacco companies. Clinton brought the hammer of morality and justice down on these Whores. Clinton stopped smoking inside buildings... I think Sourthern American Tobacco tried to destroy Clinton for what he did to them.

[dArKeR]

4. One of these articles directly said "Tom Delay" subverted the Anti-Terror

Act.
Big Tobacco - by Mark Schapiro

Tobacco is one of the most globalized industries on the planet. More cigarettes are traded than any other single product, some trillion "sticks," as they're known in the business, passing international borders each year. As a result, American brands have been propelled into every corner of the world, with just four companies controlling 70 percent of the global market. Marlboro, Kool, Kent: They have become as omnipresent around the world as they are here in the United States. With declining sales in this country, foreign markets have become increasingly critical to the tobacco companies' financial health: The top US tobacco firms now earn more from cigarettes sold abroad than in the United States. How they got there is a tale that leads straight into a global underground of smugglers and money launderers who have played a key role in facilitating the tobacco companies' entry into foreign markets…

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020506&s=schapiro

+++++++++++++++++++

How Big Tobacco Subverted Anti-Terror Act

How Big Tobacco nicked terror act Firms accused of smuggling cigarettes feared language on laundering

Mark Shaprio
MSNBC

NEW YORK, June 13 — On the one-month anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the tobacco industry took aim at Congress’ first effort to respond to the crisis with a major piece of new legislation — the Patriot Act. Why would America’s largest tobacco companies take an interest in a bill designed to go after America’s terrorist adversaries?

THE ANSWER: legal liability. Not that the tobacco companies are terrorists, but some of their marketing and distribution strategies look awfully similar to the illegal financing systems used by terrorists. At least they do from the U.S. Department of Justice perspective.

To get to the bottom of this story, we need to return to those traumatized days last fall, in which our lives were filled with fears of another terrorist attack, the retaliation of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, and shock and horror at the revelation that anthrax had contaminated the halls of
Congress.

http://lists.essential.org/pipermail/intl-tobacco/2002q2/000750.html

++++++++++++++++

Cigarette giant denies smoking leads to cancer - Imperial Tobacco

A giant British tobacco company is to take the unprecedented step this week of denying there is a proven causal link between smoking and lung cancer in the first case against a cigarette firm to go to a UK court.

The unique defense, to be heard in Scotland's Court of Session, denies decades of scientific proof of such a link, which was accepted by the British Government in 1957.

Imperial Tobacco is being sued for £500,000 (US$835,000) by Margaret McTear, whose husband, Alf, a 60-a-day smoker from Beith near Glasgow, died of lung cancer in 1993. The case, which starts tomorrow, will be scrutinized across Europe by lawyers who want to bring similar actions against tobacco firms.


http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2003/10/06/2003070628

[baby_bear]

5. We can't sue DOJ, can we?

As taxpayers, we just got screwed by "our" government. Isn't there any possible recourse for us?

I suspect not, except if fair elections come back into style.

crap

b_b

[dArKeR]

16. If you can make a "citizen's arrest" I wonder if you could file RICO

charges? Someone should atleast try to save out country. Don't you think we owe that to our Nation?

[DeepModem Mom]

7. Words fail me. Too much...

this constant barrage of corruption and abdication of the responsibility of governance is too much.

[DeepModem Mom]

8. kick

[mbperrin]

9. This would be the Alberto Gonzales DOJ, yes?

Well, Al, you might wanta look into the major organ failure here....

[Shallah Kali]

10. My Dad died of lung cancer. He started smoking when it was good for you

and tried to quit when it came out it was bad. He would stop for a while, for weeks or even months, but would always go back. He managed to quit for 2 years before he was diagnosed with cancer. Too much damage had been done. He never got to retire, he always had to work hard for a living. My Mother is without the man she wanted to spend her entire life with from the day she met him. As far as I am concerned tobbacco companies have my father's blood on their hands. I hold them responsible for the agony that made him think of suicide. They knew their product was toxic. They knew it would make people suffer and die but they kept on selling it and saying it was safe. They put profit above human decency. And I hold the government responsible as well for not acting against this years ago and I hold the bush admin. responsible now for letting them off once again. Those billions were earned by poisioning people, profiting from addiction, pain and suffering. This is vile.

[moondust]

13. Big tobacco is big Repug donor.

Go figure.

[Roland99]

14. LAT says U.S. reduced tobacco settlement under pressure, Dems seek answers

http://rawstory.com/news/2005/After_LA_Times_says_U.S._reduced_tobacco_settlement_under_pressure_Dem_seeks_an_0608.html

Democratic congressmen Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Marty Meehan (D-MA) have demanded the Office of Inspector general conduct an inquiry into whether political pressure played a role in the sudden reversal of prosecutors to demand compensation from the tobbacco industry, RAW STORY has learned.

Despite a key government witness asserting that $130 billion is necessary to fund smoking cessation programs, the Justice Department asked the Court for only $10 billion, surprising reporters and those familiar with the issue.

A person familiar with the situation, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the Los Angeles Times the change was "forced on the tobacco team by higher-level, politically appointed officials of the Justice Department," including Associate Atty. Gen. Robert McCallum, who oversees the civil division.

Waxman's letter follows.

A new Deep Throat?

[Fire Walk With Me]

15. Mmm, Culture of Life (Homer Simpson drool effect)

Cultures are comprised of bacteria.

[Theduckno2]

17. To err on the side of life?

Why is it that the Administration will spare no effort to save the life of a woman in a persistant vegetative state and squander the opportunity to better (or save) the lives of millions of US citizens? IMHO it is because they are money grubbing hypocrites!:grr: