The upsurge of lawsuits against tobacco companies in the 1990s did not happen because greedy trial lawyers suddenly realized the money to be made by suing “Big Tobacco”.

The Smoking Nazi Congress

Trail lawyers had been suing tobacco companies for decades prior since the 1950, but the courts threw them out. The courts then were guided by the rule of law which can only be properly applied in the belief of personal responsibility. Tobacco is poison, but courts recognized that plaintiffs often knew about the consequences and therefore suing for personally-inflicted harm is unjustified. This is how the law worked for decades, but then the state of Florida, always booming with great ideas, decided that not only can trial lawyers get rich but states too. Florida was the first state in the country to change its tort laws to allow for suing of tobacco companies under a scheme that is worthy of a kangaroo court. Tobacco companies were put under defense and not allowed to defend themselves using the available information to prove that plaintiffs knew about the long-term consequences of smoking. Sometimes Florida courts even cited statistics as “proof” that tobacco companies harmed a certain individual. Florida’s legislation was a break in the Anglo-Saxon tradition of innocent until proven guilty and personal responsibility. The state sued under the pretext that Medicare patients suffering from the consequences of smoking were a strain on the state budget and that the state then had a right to seek “compensation” from tobacco companies. Once Florida won its lawsuits, other states realized they could also gain and so did the federal government. It was Florida’s precedent that set the stage for the federal government squeezing hundreds of billions from tobacco companies in a “settlement”. [To find about more on the outrage that are lawsuits against tobacco companies in America, see the many policy papers written by Cato scholar Robert Levy.]

Every year tobacco companies pay states for “compensation,” but that is not enough for politicians whom are always seeking new ways to control individuals. Congress has just passed and the president signed the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act. The act will delegate to the FDA the right to more vigorously regulate tobacco sales in America.

The Economist:

The new law will require disclosure of all product ingredients and the placement of more prominent warning labels on packages. The FDA will also have the right to review all new tobacco products before they go to market and to ban companies from advertising any of its products as healthier alternatives by describing them as “lite” or “mild”, for example.

It is one thing for Congress to further regulate tobacco, the most forewarned about product if there ever was one. But what is most gulling is that Congress will force the tobacco companies to fund their own unconstitutional regulation! The insanity.

The total cost of the FDA’s tobacco regulations will begin at $85 million a year and rise to over $700 million in ten years.

I would not be surprised if actual regulation will cost less and Congress just intends to pocket the residual.