Submitted by Edward L. Sweda, Mar 23, 2007 12:18

It is interesting that, while you claim the the federal government's racketeering lawsuit against the tobacco industry "had little if any legal basis," the judge who presided over the case and who heard the testimony of hundreds of witnesses and read thousands of documents found otherwise. For more information on Judge Gladys Kessler's August 2006 opinion, see http://tobacco.neu.edu/litigation/cases/DOJ/kessler_decision_0806.htm and http://tobacco.neu.edu/litigation/cases/DOJ/doj_opinion_summary.pdf

You refer to Judge Kessler as "an anti-tobacco judge appointed by President Clinton," but there is no evidence at all that Judge Kessler had ever engaged in anti-tobacco advocacy before being assigned to this case. In a very detailed and well-reasoned opinion, she determined that the major cigarette manufacturers, by their conduct over a span of decades, violated the federal RICO statute. [Thus, the lawsuit can hardly be characterized as "frivolous."]

Judge Kessler found that the tobacco industry is an industry "that survives, and profits, from selling a highly addictive product which causes diseases that lead to a staggering number of deaths per year, an immeasurable amount of human suffering and eceonomic loss, and a profound burden on our national health care system. Defendants have known many of these facts for at least 50 years or more. Despite that knowledge, they have consistently, repeatedly, and with enormous skill and sophistication, denied these facts to the public, to the Government, and to the public health community. Moreover, in order to sustain the economic viability of their companies, defendants have denied that they marketed and advertised their products to children under the age of eighteen and to young people between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one in order to ensure an adequate supply of 'replacement smokers,' as older ones fall by the wayside through death, illness or cessation of smoking. In short, Defendants have marketed and sold their lethal product with zeal, with deception, with a single-minded focus on their financial success, and without regard for the human tragedy or social costs that success exacted."

Stop being apologists for the tobacco companies, aka adjudicated racketeers.

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