1,160 Deaths a Day . . .
In the escalating war against smoking -- a habit that has taken many more lives than all of America's wars combined -- some states are seeking compensation from tobacco companies for medical expenses for smoking-related injuries, and prosecutors are contemplating perjury and conspiracy charges against tobacco executives who testified to disbelief in the obvious -- the addictive nature of nicotine. In this war, ironies and paradoxes abound.</br></br>Smokers shiver outside their workplaces, pariahs in a country the father of which was a tobacco farmer. Probably the most powerful disincentive for smoking -- peer pressure -- is also the most powerful incentive for people to start smoking. Most smokers start before age 18 and start because of peer pressure in the search for status and glamour. However, smoking now seems dumb and declasse.</br></br>Cigarettes are the world's most heavily taxed consumer product. U.S. state taxes range up to Washington's 81.5 cents a pack, and in 20 industrialized nations cigarette taxes are even higher, sometimes five times higher. The ideal revenue yield from such taxes would be zero.</br></br>By some calculations, the social costs of smoking (in health care, lost productivity from illness and shortened lives, and fire damage) about equal the sum produced by cigarette taxes plus the savings that smoking produces in the form of reduced spending for Social Security, pensions and nursing home care for smokers. If every smoker quit today, that would be a crisis for Social Security and all pension plans that incorporate actuarial assumptions about millions of smokers dying before they can receive benefits they otherwise would collect.</br></br>Cigarettes generate interesting product liability litigation because cigarettes are harmful when used as intended. The fact that cigarettes are harmful has been broadly understood for several generations and today is almost universally acknowledged. (The one-third of smokers who die prematurely because of smoking lose on average 20 years of life expectancy, or 29 minutes per cigarette.) The consensus about this, combined with the warning labels on cigarette packs and advertising, has helped immunize tobacco companies against liability for damage their products do. Juries have spurned plaintiffs who have said they deserve recompense from tobacco companies because "everyone knows" smoking is harmful.