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Action on Smoking and Health
A National Legal-Action Antismoking Organization Entirely Supported by Tax-Deductible Contributions
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ASH-PR: States Urged to Sue Over Eclipse Cigarettes [09/29-5]
Excerpts from: States Urged to Sue Over Eclipse Cigarettes
[09/28/05]
Misleading Claims Could Kill, Disable, and Cost Taxpayers
The nation's Attorneys General were urged today to sue R.J. Reynolds [RJR] for making misleadingly deadly claims about the alleged health benefits of using its Eclipse cigarettes in violation of a multi-billion dollar law-suit settlement involving most of the states.
Action on Smoking and Health (ASH), the nation's oldest antismoking organization, and the one which used legal action so successfully against the tobacco industry, urged the legal action "because we know of no other law suit in which your state is involved which has a greater potential to save lives, prevent disability, and save taxpayer dollars."
Eclipse looks like -- but is not -- a conventional cigarette. It delivers nicotine to its users by passing hot air over treated tobacco.
Ads claim that "Eclipse responds to concerns about certain smoking-related illnesses, including cancer" and "The best choice for smokers who worry about their health is to quit. The next best choice is Eclipse."
But there's no valid scientific support for those claims, says ASH and almost three dozen attorneys general, and they violate the multi-state tobacco settlement. ASH contends that "many smokers will be dissuaded from quitting by the health claims being made by Eclipse," and that other companies will make similar misleading claims if RJR isn't forced to stop running the ads and pay appropriate damages for running them.
Vermont has filed suit against RJR, but other states have so far refused to do so, even though 37 attorneys general warned RJR about a law suit over its advertising. "The fact that California, Connecticut, DC, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, New York and Tennessee reportedly participated with Vermont in the investigation but so far have declined to join the suit, and that other signatories to the MSA have not publicly even supported the suit, might lead judges and jurors to believe that Vermont’s position is not well supported. It also weakens the suit and provides comfort to RJR and to its supporters," said ASH in a letter faxed and mailed to the other 49 attorneys general.
Vermont's attorney general William Sorrel has said that "We encourage the tobacco companies to develop less harmful tobacco products, but until they do -- and until they can scientifically demonstrate that new cigarette designs will reduce the risks of smoking -- we cannot tolerate misleading health claims about any cigarette product." He also said that the ads falsely claim "scientific studies show that, compared to other cigarettes, Eclipse may present less risk of cancer, chronic bronchitis and possibly emphysema."
Cigarettes kill and disable more Americans each year than all other products combined, and the Surgeon General estimates that the costs of smoking -- most of which are borne by taxpayers in the form of higher taxes and inflated health insurance premiums -- are well over $100 billion annually, says ASH.
As a result, if even a small percentage of the millions of smokers who might otherwise try to quit are dissuaded from doing so by false claims that Eclipse is less hazardous, the costs in human lives, human suffering, and taxpayer dollars will be enormous, argues ASH.
Even more disastrous would be the natural tendency of tobacco companies to market other types of pseudo cigarettes, and to then compete with Eclipse by making even more extravagant claims about their supposed health benefits, says public interest lawyer John Banzhaf, Executive Director of ASH.
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