Pushers Can’t Pin It All On The Users

The bigger their lies, the harder they fall. The tobacco industry took a whopper of a tumble last week.

Prices of tobacco-company stocks dropped as much as 14 percent last Friday after a Florida jury held one firm partly liable for a 66-year-old man’s lung cancer.

“Partly” is a crucial word. When smokers begin to cough up blood and discover to their horror that those warning labels were accurate, the primary responsibility has to be theirs. But emerging evidence is supporting liability for cigarette makers as well.

That’s why Wall Street devalued tobacco stocks on Friday, and it’s why a jury awarded a $750,000 verdict against Brown & Williamson, maker of Lucky Strike cigarettes.

The plaintiff, Grady Carter, had considered himself a lucky man indeed, smoking from 1949 until his lung cancer diagnosis in 1991. “I liked to smoke,” he told the jury. He had ignored his wife and son when they gave him information about tobacco’s effects. He rebuffed his employer’s smoking-cessation classes. To avoid scoldings, he chose a doctor who smoked. He even predicted he’d beat the odds and escape disease. He was, in short, a one-man argument for smokers’ liability. Wisely, he admitted liability.

But Carter’s own liability does not absolve the industry of its wrongs. The jury was swayed by internal tobacco company documents that show the industry is fully aware its product is dangerous and addictive. Yet, the industry continues a big-lie promotional campaign, seeking profit from the same addictive property it pretends to deny.

While claiming that harmful properties aren’t proved, the industry tries in court to escape liability on the ground that customers know smoking is harmful. But the jury found this stance untenable.

More juries may reach the same conclusion due to continuing discoveries of internal documents showing the extent of the industry’s knowing, deceptive promotion of a lethal product.

The cost of more verdicts for individual smokers is only a beginning. States and health insurance carriers are suing the industry to recover the billions spent on care of ailing smokers. The suits brandish evidence the industry deliberately aims marketing at the young to replace with new addicts the ones tobacco kills.

Because smokers always have borne their responsibility in a tragic and personal way, there is justice when the industry trembles in the face of accountability as well.

, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = John Webster For the editorial board