As you know, quitting smoking can be difficult. Smoking is a complex behavior, but the main reason quitting is so hard is that nicotine is highly addictive. And to make the nicotine as addictive as possible, the tobacco industry has intentionally engineered the cigarette to get as much nicotine to the brain as they can as quickly as they can. So you would think that I might be surprised to read in the Associated Press that the tobacco industry is petitioning the Supreme Court to “wipe away court holdings that the [tobacco] industry illegally concealed the dangers of cigarette smoking.” The goal is to prevent the US government from asking the Supreme Court for $300 billion from the industry for “a half-century of deception that has cost the lives and damaged the health of millions of Americans.”

Actually, their request of the Supreme Court does not surprise me in the least. The US tobacco industry has a long and notorious history of purposefully deceiving the public. Just for fun, let’s pull some wonderfully examples of tobacco industry documents that came to light in the mid 1990’s when the State of Minnesota successfully sued Big Tobacco.

To illustrate the industry’s strategy to address concern over cigarette safety a document from the Tobacco Institute (a tobacco industry trade group ) dated May 1, 1972 (trial exhibit 20,987) stated, “…..[the tobacco company will] defend itself on three major fronts—litigation [e.g., current suit above], politics, and public opinion….creating doubt about the health charge without actually denying it….” And they used this strategy with great success -- at least for 20-30 years. Their deep pockets put many people in public office who protected the tobacco industry’s interests at the expense of the health of the American public; they engaged in endless litigation when challenged about the dangers of cigarettes, and they hired “scientists” to fabricate false scientific information that supported their contention that cigarettes were not addictive. Repeatedly the tobacco industry told the public and the government, using a strategy of smoke and mirrors, that they did not believe nicotine was addictive. They even testified to this in court.

But guess what? In a British American Tobacco Company memo from HD Anderson to RP Dobson on August 7, 1964 they clearly state, “There seems no doubt that the “kick” of a cigarette is due to the concentration of nicotine in the bloodstream…and this is a product of the quantity of nicotine in the smoke and the speed of transfer of that nicotine from the smoke to the bloodstream” (trial exhibit 10,356). In a Brown and Williamson tobacco company document on March 25, 1983 it states, “Nicotine is the addicting agent in cigarettes” (trial exhibit 13,344). Hmmmmm…..anything seem fishy here??

Most damning of all the trial exhibit documents was the Philip Morris memo from TS Osborne that illustrated PM’s intention to hide any internal company documents that showed they clearly understood how addictive nicotine was and that illness and death was absolutely associated with smoking which stated, “Ship all documents to Cologne (their European office)…..We will monitor in person every 2-3 months…..I will act on them and destroy.”

Given all this evidence of deception, Miguel Estrada, Philip Morris lawyer, has the audacity to cite First Amendment violations stating, “As long as these statements were true or made in good faith, they fall squarely with the First Amendment’s Speech and Petition Clauses, which provide constitutional protection for ‘debate on public issues’.” Hmmm…..

I could cite endless damning documents that surfaced in the Minnesota trial. You can find them yourself here.

I can’t wait to hear how the Supreme Court responds to their request. Meanwhile, programs like the Free & Clear Quit for Life ® Program continue to help thousands of highly addicted smokers successfully quit each week. Fortunately, every cloud has a silver lining.