Tobacco companies should put up money for new cancer centre

There is hypocrisy on both sides, but governments do have case for lawsuit

When it comes to Big Tobacco versus big government, it isn’t so much the smoke that makes you choke, but the stunning hypocrisy of both combatants.

Take, for example, the Alberta government and its voracious appetite for levying taxes on the sale of cigarettes, which generated about $ 930 million in the last financial year — about three times what was raked in 20 years ago. At the same time that it was milking money from the sale of the cancer sticks, it was launching a lawsuit against the very tobacco companies responsible for their manufacture.

Back in 2012, then- premier Alison Redford announced a lawsuit seeking to recover $ 10 billion from Big Tobacco for the estimated cost of caring for patients who were stricken by smoking- related cancers in our province, stretching back to the 1950s.

Each year, approximately 3,000 Albertans die from tobacco- related illnesses.

“This lawsuit, to be clear, is not about banning cigarettes or punishing smokers. It is about recovering health- care costs as a result of the misconduct of the tobacco industry,” Redford said at the time.

Total hypocrisy, of course. If defective baby seats had killed or maimed thousands of our little kids, and in doing so, cost the health- care system a bundle, then long before the legal ink was dry, we’d expect such products to be banned. If the government not only allowed their continued sale, but actually shared in the ongoing profit to the tune of almost a billion dollars a year, we’d do something even more virulent than voting NDP.

But let’s cut Redford some slack. In fact, let’s give her some praise — because the truth is she should have been an even greater hypocrite on our behalf. Let’s hope our current premier has the moral ambiguity sorely needed when you step into the ring with the industry that profits from killing people.

This week, a Quebec court ordered three major tobacco companies to pay $ 15 billion in moral and punitive damages in a civil action case brought by that province’s smokers. The plaintiffs with cancer who began smoking before January 1976 will get $ 100,000 each. Those who first lit up after that date are entitled to $ 90,000.

Of course, the tobacco companies are mortified — an apt word, if ever there was one. They will appeal, and who can know what the eventual settlement will be, other than there will be one. Regardless, if the Quebec smokers hit by cancer can get a court to bring in such an award, why should the Alberta government, on behalf of its taxpayers who’ve had to pay for the huge cost of treatment, not go after a much bigger payout?

And remember, when it comes to hypocrisy, there’s no bigger claimant to the throne than the tobacco companies. These very companies fought tooth and nail against any challenge to the right of people to smoke themselves to death. Back in the 1960s and 1970s, they fought rearguard actions against claims it was even harmful. When that became futile, they battled any infringement on advertising or packaging.

Yet, after the Quebec verdict, they used the very restrictions they fought against as mitigation of their culpability.

“Today’s judgment ignores the reality that both adult consumers and governments have known about the risks associated with smoking for decades, and seeks to relieve adult consumers of any responsibility for their actions,” said Tamara Gitto, vice- president of Imperial Tobacco Canada.

Let’s imagine rolling back that statement 45 years to some 16- year- old in High River lighting up for the first time. He’s 61 right now and ailing as he shuffles between cancer treating facilities across Calgary.

So, we want a one- stop shop for such treatment in our city, but are wringing our hands about paying for it? Then jack up the lawsuit to $ 20 billion and use that money to fund it. After the Quebec decision, there’s leverage. Hypocrisy is nothing if it saves people’s lives.