We’d like to express our congratulations, and thanks, to Mass. Attorney General Andrea Campbell for her efforts in securing the recent landmark $600 million settlement with the major tobacco product companies. In addition to the $600 payment this year, the agreement calls for the companies to make annual payments in the years ahead.
This settlement comes on the heels of a comprehensive agreement Campbell’s office reached last year with JUUL, the e-cigarette manufacturer, whose products have proven attractive to our nation’s youth to such an extent that an estimated two million middle school and high school students used those highly-addictive nicotine devices in 2023 alone.
These and previous agreements seek to hold the tobacco manufacturers accountable for their marketing practices that directly have targeted our nation’s youth for decades (remember the infamous Joe Camel ads from the late 1980s?) with the express goal of churning out successive new generations of nicotine addicts.
The direct harm caused by tobacco products, whether they be cigarettes, cigars, e-cigarettes, tobacco leaves, or chewing tobacco, have long made them the greatest single source of public health problems in our country for generations, including lung cancer, throat cancer, emphysema, high-blood pressure, and cardiovascular disease. In fact, despite all of the progress we have made in reducing tobacco use in our country, lung cancer remains the leading cause of cancer deaths among both men and women in the United States and tobacco use is linked to 400,000 deaths in the U.S. each year.
Tobacco use also has a hidden and even more pernicious effect: Contrary to popular belief that existed for decades that marijuana was a “gateway” drug leading to stronger drug use, studies conducted both in England and in this country (by the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health) have shown that it is cigarette smoking at a young age that is most-predictive of a person’s risk of using illegal drugs later in life.
For our part, we take great satisfaction in the sea-change in the way that society views the use of tobacco products. Our newspapers won awards in the early and mid-1990s from the New England Press Assoc. and the Mass. Press Assoc. for our investigative stories and editorials regarding the ways in which local boards of health thwarted public health initiatives regarding tobacco use in public places. We also were honored by the Mass. Cancer Society in two successive years for our advocacy urging federal, state, and local leaders to recognize the need to regulate tobacco use in our society.
We applaud Attorney General Campbell for her efforts in bringing the tobacco companies to heel for the damage they have done to so many families in our country. Although the hundreds of millions of dollars from these settlements will not bring back any of our loved ones who suffered and died prematurely because of their tobacco use, hopefully the funds will educate future generations to prevent them from becoming addicted to tobacco products of any kind.