Tobacco companies are a step closer today to putting out “corrective statements” about their history of defrauding the American public by hiding the dangers of smoking, according to an agreement reached Friday with the Department of Justice.
The agreement was reached the day before the 50th anniversary of the surgeon general’s warning on tobacco and lung cancer, released Jan. 11, 1964.
The long-awaited advertising campaign was ordered in 2006 by U.S. District Court Judge Gladys Kessler, who found tobacco companies guilty of violating civil racketeering laws and lying to the public about the dangers of smoking and in their marketing to children. Kessler must approve the agreement.
That verdict was the culmination of a lawsuit brought by the Department of Justice in 1999, when it sued tobacco companies under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.
According to the agreement, the campaign will include online and full-page print ads in the Sunday editions of the top 35 newspapers in the country, including USA TODAY, as well as prime-time TV spots on the three major networks for one year. The corrective statements also must be attached to packages of cigarettes in what marketers call an “outsert.”
Brian May, a spokesman for Atria, the parent company of tobacco giant Philip Morris USA, said he had no comment. Other tobacco companies could not be reached immediately.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit has rejected two industry appeals.
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