Template:1994MSA

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1994: The crucial year when the tobacco companies accepted they were losing: internal documents being exposed to public scrutiny. Hillary Clinton's health task-force focused on tobacco; the Waxman hearings and whistleblowers exposed them: class action suits were filed against the cigarette companies. 1994 Mar: Florida judge Robert P Kaye was over-ruled by his state appeal court. He was forced to allow 60,000 flight attendants to jointly sue US tobacco companies for health difficulties they claim were caused by inhaling passengers' cigarette smoke. (This was the first class-action against tobacco.) [1] 1994 Apr 18 Time Magazine asks "Is it all over for Smokers: The battle against tobacco is turning into a rout." Joycelyn Elders, Surgeon General, says: America will be smoke-free, but not in my lifetime. We have 40 million people who are addicted to smoking, We've got to help them get over their addiction, and that's going to take a while. Henry Waxman's House subcommittee will vote next week on the Smoke-Free Environment Act. Any building entered by 10 or more people each day will have to become smoke-free. One subcommittee wants to raise the cigarette tax by $1.25 for health care reform Last month Congress signed a bill outlawing smoking in all public and some private schools. Department of Defence now bans smoking in offices, even soldiers in their tanks. Marylands, Washingon State will ban smoking in virtually all workplaces, OSHA has proposed a ban on almost all indoor smoking in the workplace FDA is taking a look at classifying nicotine as a drug MacDonalds and other companies have banned smoking, [A year ago] EPA said passive smoking was a Class A carcinogen which killed 3000 non-smokers a year For the first time members of the antismoking Congressional Task Force on Tobacco and Health outnumber pro-tobacco House members, 53 to 42. The industry lost its virtual stranglehold on Congress. CDC says cigarette smoke kills about 418,000 people a year. [2] 1994 May 23: Mike Moore, the Attorney-General of Mississippi, filed suit against the tobacco companies to recover medical costs for tobacco-related illnesses. " The state of Mississippi didn't smoke cigarettes, but the state of Mississippi has had to pay about $100 million a year for the care of our residents who smoked after they were deceived by the cigarette companies about the addictive nature of their products, " said state Attorney General Mike Moore. [3] The tobacco companies were anxious to get the federal law passed before the Mississippi case came to trial - further negotiations were now done on a state by state basis. So they settled Mississippi, then later Florida and Texas. A dozen other States lined up, and this formed the basis for Minnesota settlement. 1994 Aug 19: Hubert H Humphrey III, the Attorney-General of Minnesota also acted. The Minnesota court set a cut-off date: documents produced before this time must be produced by Philip Morris and placed in a public Depository in Minnesota . (They became generally available after the Master Settlement Agreement in1996) [4]

FROM THIS TIME ON THE TOBACCO INDUSTRY WAS MUCH MORE CAREFUL ABOUT THE DOCUMENTS IT CREATED. THE COMPANIES BEGAN TO SYSTEMATICALLY CULL THEIR FILES UNDER WHAT WAS EUPHEMISTICALLY CALLED THE "Document Retention Program". THEIR ASSOCIATED, HELPERS AND SUPPORT ORGANISATIONS WERE ALSO MUCH MORE WARY ABOUT BEING ASSOCIATED WITH THE TOBACCO INDUSTRY.

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