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Pastimes : Smoke, Smoke....Smoke That Cigarette -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: MSB who wrote (2)	3/28/2000 7:55:00 AM
From: redwood	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12

i know people who smoke an i know it is one of the most addictive drugs around....i don't think it is all your fault....these tobacco guys are peddling an addictive,harmful drug....they know it an profit from it....if they tried to bring tobacco on the market today as a new drug...there would be no chance of it comming to market...the hypocracy of what the government allows simply amazes me.....more people die from tobacco than ALL of the illegal drugs COMBINED.......sue the sons of bitches if you get a chance....my father smoked for over 40 years an finally quit.....good luck....its a tough fight.....everyone who smokes should sue those sons of bitches.........redwood

To: MSB who wrote (2)	3/28/2000 9:40:00 AM
From: caly	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12

My father started smoking when he was a teenager. He continued to smoke until the early 60s, but quit when the Surgeon General first issued his warning about it. Too late for my dad though, he died from lung cancer two years later. He was 42 when he died, and I was 3. I hope the tobacco companies get sued into oblivion.

To: MSB who wrote (2)	3/28/2000 8:23:00 PM
From: MSB	Respond to of 12

Another article from the Yahoo Finance site: Tuesday March 28, 6:59 pm Eastern Time Lawyer in sick-smokers case attacks tobacco experts By Michael Connor MIAMI, March 28 (Reuters) - U.S. cigarette makers fighting a potentially crippling lawsuit did not produce a single credible expert to counter claims smoking causes cancer and other diseases, a plaintiffs lawyer said on Tuesday. Attorney Stanley Rosenblatt, summing up in the high-stakes penalty phase of a landmark class-action lawsuit on behalf of as many as 1 million sick smokers in Florida, ridiculed expert defense witnesses as grossly overpaid and poorly qualified. One physician called by cigarette companies was paid $105,000, had little or no expertise in tobacco issues, and was known for peddling on the Internet a program promising to cure depression in six weeks, Rosenblatt said. Rosenblatt also told jurors, the same six who handed Philip Morris and other big cigarette companies a withering liability verdict in the case, that tobacco industry lawyers were trying to blame the throat cancer of one plaintiff on wood dust, rather than smoking, without any respectable evidence. ``They're selling wood dust because they have nothing else to sell,' Rosenblatt said in Miami-Dade County Court. The jurors, who have heard evidence in the case since October 1998, decided last July that Philip Morris (NYSE:MO - news) and other cigarette companies were liable for the smoking-related illnesses of hundreds of thousands of Floridians and knowingly hid tobacco's dangers for decades. The six must now decide individual, or compensatory, damages for a former wood worker, a nurse and the husband of a woman who died last year from lung cancer. If compensatory damages are awarded, the jurors will then decide punitive damages for the entire class. Such a ruling could come within weeks and may go as high as $300 billion or more, a figure some on Wall Street fear could force tobacco companies to seek bankruptcy-court protection. Tobacco lawyers were expected to make their closing arguments later this week. In recent weeks, they presented witnesses testifying that the lung cancer of one of the individual plaintiffs, Mary Farnan, may be of a sort the jurors last summer decided was not caused by smoking. The so-called Engle class-action, named after a Miami Beach pediatrician with emphysema blamed on smoking, is just one battlefront in a broad courtroom war against U.S. cigarette makers. On Monday, a San Francisco jury ordered Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Holdings Inc._(NYSE:RJR - news), also a defendant in the Engle case, to pay a dying ex-smoker and her husband $20 million in punitive damages. The tobacco companies might as well paint a bulls-eye on their butts and tattoo the words, "Please sue me" on their foreheads. The best part of course being the rest of the addicts will get to pay for it all. I wonder if cigarettes will someday be sold by the lid, or if laws will be passed for mandatory jail terms caught selling smuggled smokes within 1000 ft. of a school. (logging off for a couple of hours)