The Supreme Court ended its term for the year this week. They issued a number of major decisions that will impact our lives for years to come. One Court action that is relevant to the anti-smoking community is a refusal to hear appeals by the tobacco industry and the federal government. The Court let stand an appellate decision that found the tobacco industry guilty of civil racketeering. The tobacco companies challenged the decision on First Amendment grounds. The court also refused to force the tobacco companies to pay back its profits - an estimated $280 billion. The federal government had appealed that aspect of the decision. I am pleased by the decision to find the tobacco companies liable but think the decision's force is weakened by the decision not to allow profit disgorgement.
What went into holding the tobacco companies guilty of civil racketeering? The lower court judge termed the tobacco companies' actions a half-century of lying over the health effects of smoking. In the 2006 case, United States District Judge Gladys Kessler concluded in a ruling of more than 1,500 pages that for more than 50 years, cigarette companies had “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 decision is a powerful rebuke of the industry that has unrelentingly preyed on consumers.
This decision touches on the tobacco company exploitation of the LGBT community. Tobacco companies are specifically targeting LGBT communities because they know that populations that are being discriminated against are more vulnerable. When they target us, tobacco companies reinforce the messaging that feeds into that vulnerability. One way they do this is through advertising. Tobacco companies began to target us with advertising in 1991, when the first tobacco ad appeared in GENRE magazine. Some of the ads are subtle appeals to our community, “gay vague” ads as they are called and others are more obvious, such as the ad for American Spirit that appeared in the Advocate on June 21st, 2005. It says, “freedom. To speak. To choose. To marry. To participate. To be. To disagree. To inhale. To believe. To love. To live. It’s all good.” This outrageous ad equates the freedom to marry with the freedom to smoke. The tobacco industry pursuit of LGBT people is part of the larger victimization of the public.
The public is fighting back with decisions like the one the Supreme Court upheld. Hopefully the courts will later force the companies to disgorge its blood profits and go out of business. Good riddance to them!
With this said, have a happy 4th. I hope the only thing smoking around you on Independence Day will be the barbecue.
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Keep track of the work Butt Out is doing by going to our website (www.butt-out.org/), friending us on Facebook (butt-outsanfrancisco) or by connecting with us on Twitter (twitter.com/buttoutsf).Butt Out is a project of Breathe California, funded by the San Francisco Tobacco Free Project, which works to get tobacco money out of LGBT community organizations in San Francisco. We also educate the public about the hazards of smoking and about smoking cessation.
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