Tobacco Giants Battle New Ads Painting Them As Liars
Source: Associated Press
In 2006, U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler ordered the nation's largest cigarette makers to publicly admit that they had lied for decades about the dangers of smoking.
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Bloodied but unbeaten, the tobacco companies have plunged into another courtroom battle in an effort to stave off the humiliation of having to underwrite an ad campaign in which they brand themselves as liars. Oral arguments are scheduled for Monday before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
The ads would appear in newspapers, on TV, websites and cigarette pack inserts. The ads, called "corrective statements," stem from a civil case the government brought in 1999 under RICO, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.
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The companies say they stand ready and willing to disseminate factual public health information about cigarettes. But they argue that these ads are designed to ensure that the public "does not believe anything the companies say on any topic."
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Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/22/tobacco-corrective-ads_n_6730504.html
bananas
(27,509 posts)woo me with science
(32,139 posts)DeSwiss
(27,137 posts)blkmusclmachine
(16,149 posts)iemitsu
(3,888 posts)that the public "does not believe anything the companies say on any topic." is the real reason that they are not believed, not the proposed ads.
surrealAmerican
(11,362 posts)It just prolongs the period of time they will be called liars. If they just aired the ads, the public would probably forget them in a few months - there are so many distractions that the general public has no long term memory for anything anymore.