Anti-smoking groups seek tougher tobacco sanctions

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Anti-Smoking and health groups have urged that cigarette makers be required to fund a long-term, $4.8 billion-a-year, anti-smoking program if the U.S. government prevails in its racketeering case against the industry.

Six anti-smoking groups told a federal judge that a 10-year, $14 billion remedy sought by the Justice Department is inadequate and that the program should not end until nearly all smokers who want to quit have succeeded in kicking the habit.

"The government’s proposal does not go far enough in altering the economic incentives of the defendants or eliminating a sufficient number of these smokers to deprive the defendants of the benefits of continuing to find ways to keep these individuals as smokers,” they said in a 112-page filing with the court.

The groups, including the American Cancer Society, the American Heart Association and the American Lung Association, made the filing late Wednesday.

The groups were invited by U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler in July to outline their views on what remedies should be imposed on the tobacco industry if she finds in favor of government charges that the industry deceived the public for decades about the hazards of Smoking.

They have criticized the legal remedies being sought by the government as inadequate ever since June, when lawyers for the Justice Department scaled back their original plans for sanctions against the industry.

The government in June asked Kessler to require cigarette makers to fund a $10 billion quit-Smoking program and pay $4 billion for an anti-Smoking education campaign to remedy decades of alleged fraud by the industry.

But the request angered anti-smoking groups because it was only a fraction of the $130 billion, 25-year quit-smoking program recommended by a government witness.

Altria’s associate general counsel, William Ohlemeyer, said in a statement that the filing was “procedural only, involving no new evidence, facts or witnesses.”

“As we have said before, this is an inappropriate effort by these organizations to improperly inject themselves into a lawsuit to which they are not parties,” Ohlemeyer said. The company plans to respond in its own filing later.

Altria Group Inc. unit Philip Morris USA opposed the intervention of the anti-smoking groups in the case, saying they lacked legal standing to be recognized by the court.

Targeted in the 1999 lawsuit are: Altria and its Philip Morris unit; Loews Corp.’s Lorillard Tobacco unit, which has a tracking stock, Carolina Group; Vector Group Ltd.’s Liggett Group; Reynolds American Inc.’s R.J. Reynolds Tobacco unit; and British American Tobacco Plc unit, British American Tobacco Investments Ltd.

The companies deny they illegally conspired to promote smoking and say the federal government has no grounds to pursue them or impose additional restrictions after they drastically overhauled marketing practices in a 1998 states settlement. 

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