The major tobacco companies will soon "launch a court-ordered national advertising campaign to end a massive fraud and racketeering case that the federal government brought against the industry nearly two decades ago. The campaign will run on TV, in newspapers, online and on cigarette packaging," the online news outlet FairWarning reports.
The ads will be “corrective statements” to rectify what the trial judge called “false, deceptive, and misleading public statements about cigarettes and smoking,” and will mark the long-delayed conclusion to what was described as the largest civil racketeering case in U.S. history. In pursuing the tobacco industry, the Department of Justice accused cigarette makers of carrying out a half-century conspiracy to hook smokers while lying about the hazards and addictiveness of smoking. Following a nine-month trial, U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler in 2006 issued an encyclopedic 1,683-page final opinion that chronicled decades of industry skullduggery.
The full article is here.
