US tobacco companies engaged in ‘numerous acts of fraud’
Judge accused firms of lying, misrepresenting and deceiving the American public about the health effects of smoking
THE ruling in the landmark 2006 case – United States v Philip Morris – was excoriating.
The tobacco industry had “marketed and sold their lethal products with zeal, with deception, with a single-minded focus on their financial success, and without regard for the human tragedy or social costs that success exacted,” Judge Gladys Kessler wrote.
The 1,652-page judgment went on: “Over the course of more than 50 years, defendants lied, misrepresented and deceived the American public, including smokers and the young people they avidly sought as ‘replacement’ smokers about the devastating health effects of smoking and environmental tobacco smoke.”
The ramifications of that judgment – which found the companies liable for racketeering by “engaging in numerous acts of fraud” – are still being felt.
It wasn’t until last November that tobacco manufacturers, including Philip Morris, were finally forced to start running advertisements across newspapers and prime-time television.
“More people die every year from smoking than murder, Aids, suicide, drugs, car crashes, and alcohol combined,” says one.
“Cigarette companies intentionally designed cigarettes with enough nicotine to create and sustain addiction,” warns another. And what is notable about the advertisements – which re- cently began running during primetime television shows and in newspapers across the United States – is the explanation behind them.
“A Federal Court has ordered RJ Reynolds Tobacco, Philip Morris USA, Altria and Lorillard to make this statement about the health effects of smoking,” the advertisements state.
The findings were particularly brutal about the expert witnesses called by the tobacco industry. One man, William E Wecker, came in for particular scorn.
“Defendants called a statistician, William Wecker, who, by his own admission, has ‘never been qualified by a court as an expert in the subject of smoking and health’,” the document states.
“Because he is a statistician, and neither an epidemiologist nor a medical doctor, Dr Wecker is ‘not able to offer opinions as to causation relating to the relative health effects of low tar cigarettes’,” it continued.
“Moreover, Dr Wecker’s statistical analyses are unconvincing because they are flawed in several ways,” the
‘Companies intentionally designed cigarettes with enough nicotine to create and sustain addiction’
critical document added, pointing out that his main opinion was “flatly contradicted by … voluminous research reports and other documents, spanning decades”.
It went on to describe his evidence as “basically irrelevant,” reflecting “his lack of understanding of the relevant subject matter” and noting his admission that “I don’t reach my opinion by weighing all the evidence”.
Dr Wecker, a statistician and applied mathematician, has, however, been working diligently for the tobacco industry for close to three decades. And it was this statistician who asked British health officials to hand over their data, which they did, in July 2016.
At the time, Philip Morris, one of his main employers, was fighting a legal battle against plain packaging – part of government plans which aimed to reduce smoking’s death toll by making the packets less attractive.
Under the laws governing release of medical data, it should only be released “in the interests of improving patient care, or in the public interest”.
The Daily Telegraph asked Dr Wecker to provide details of the study, including any plans to publish its findings, but no response was provided.