Tobacco and Public Health - TCSC Indonesia

RUTH ROEMER 689
The case was settled by an agreement with the defendant tobacco companies allowing
all class members to proceed with their individual claims and providing payment of
$300 million by the tobacco companies to establish the Broin medical research foundation
which, in part, will help with early detection and cure of diseases associated with
cigarette smoke suffered by flight attendants (Tobacco on Trial 1997).
But when the Attorney General of Mississippi filed the first lawsuit on behalf of
a state against the tobacco companies to recover the costs incurred by the state for treating
patients with tobacco-related diseases, the floodgates opened. Four state lawsuits
were eventually settled. The Mississippi case was settled out of court on July 3, 1997,
with tobacco companies agreeing to pay $3.3 billion over 25 years. Florida settled next
on August 25, 1997 for $11.3 billion. Texas settled on January 16, 1998 for $15.3 billion.
In Minnesota, the Attorney General refused to settle until all the evidence was on the
record, so that millions of industry documents would be disclosed. The Minnesota case
was settled on May 8, 1998 for $6.1 billion, with a requirement that the industry maintain
depositories of 30 million documents and release an index to millions of previously
released documents (Bloch et al. 1998). These documents reveal the duplicity of the
industry, its targeting of children, its corrupt science, its deliberate enhancement of the
nicotine contents of tobacco, its denial of the addictiveness of tobacco, and its concealment
from the public of what it knew about the dangers to health caused by tobacco
(Glantz et al. 1996). This evidence, together with depositories of industry documents in
San Francisco, California and Guilford, England reveal the extent of the fraud and concealment
by the industry, now available for use in other litigation (Rabin 2001).
A stormy period ensued in which a global settlement agreement was negotiated in
1997. It required approval by Congress because it would have affected the authority of
the Food and Drug Administration to regulate tobacco and would have barred private
litigation against the companies. No legislation passed because the industry insisted on
immunity from further liability; and when this was unlikely, it withdrew its support for
the global settlement (Bloch et al. 1998).
In November 1998 the suits of the remaining 46 states were settled in a Master
Settlement in which the tobacco companies agreed to pay $206 billion over 25 years
(the global settlement called for payment of $516 billion over 25 years), with each state
receiving an average of $200 million annually (Daynard et al. 2001).
In addition, the Master Settlement commits the states to reduce underage tobacco
use, prohibits gifts, credits, and coupons based on proof of purchase without documentation
that the purchaser is adult, restricts free samples of cigarettes to adult only
facilities, limits advertising by prohibiting cartoons and requiring removal of billboards,
transit advertising, and other outdoor advertising, and bans four types of
sponsorship (concerts, events of which the intended audience is a significant percentage
of youth, events with paid youth participants, and certain athletic events).
Moreover, the Master Settlement requires the industry to dissolve the Council
for Tobacco Research—USA and the Tobacco Institute, although manufacturers may