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If you're eating a turkey sandwich with "lite" mayonnaise and drinking a diet soda, you expect your lunch is going to be healthier than that of the guy next to you eating the real stuff, right? What about when it comes to what you smoke?
In 2006, U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler passed a major ruling that said tobacco companies' use of labels like "light" and "low tar" was misleading and ordered them to cease using such labels. Now the issue is back in front of the courts as the Justice Department wants tobacco companies to pay up to $14 bilion in penalties, and the companies say they did nothing wrong.
"The current punishment does not fit the magnitude of the crime," M. Cass Wheeler of the American Heart Association told USA Today. "That money should be used for education and cessation programs to break the cycle of addiction, not to entice children and adults to start and maintain a very deadly habit."
Do you think the "light" and "low tar" labels were misleading, or should we be smart enough to know that a cigarette is a cigarette, no matter what the label says? If they were indeed misleading, should tobacco companies have to pay?
If I were smoking light cigarettes, yes, I would assume they are a little healthier for me than regular ones. I'm sure a lot of people use them in thinking that they're helping themselves cut back on their smoking when they're trying to quit. Now that we all know better, yes, absolutely Big Tobacco should be punished and fined.
Since we live in a society with a certain amount of governmental oversight over what we consume then it would be natural to trust what you're seeing on the label. I mean, if you purchased a diet soda and it had as much sugar as a non-diet soda would it be your fault for not knowing that before you drank it?
I think the tobacco companies have already been shown to be deceptive in their advertising as well as in their knowledge of the dangers of a product they still continue to push somewhat irresponsibly.
I see nothing wrong in tobacco companies being made to pay the penalties ... they certainly made enough profit over the years. The ideal situation would be if they were to stop manufacturing the gosh darn things. Surely they can find something more healthful to produce that wouldn't get them into so much trouble with consumers and the courts.
It must be that there's so much profit in it, even with the lawsuits.