The current anti-smoking campaign
is not about your health ...

It is all about YOUR MONEY... They want it!

Who Profits in the Tobacco Wars?

Ever wonder how much money attorney's are making in all the tobacco related lawsuits? Or do you think they're donating their services in the public interest? It's not unrealistic that half of the settlement money goes directly into the pockets of these legal vultures.

• Lawyers involved in the Florida suit were asking for $185,000 an hour.
• The team of five lawyers who negotiated a $17.3 billion settlement in Texas' lawsuit against tobacco companies has been awarded a record $3.3 billion in fees. Florida lawyers $3.43 billion, and the Mississippi team was awarded $1.43 billion.
• The tobacco industry was ordered to pay $775 million in legal fees to five Massachusetts firms that sued on behalf of that state.
• Minnesota, Florida, Maryland, Connecticut, New Jersey and Utah have agreed to pay attorneys 25 percent of the settlement amount, while Arizona, Oklahoma, Kansas, Hawaii and Illinois have agreed to pay between 10 and 20 percent.

Smoking related lawsuits have become a big money maker for attorneys. They are getting more of the money than some states would receive in total under the national settlement. They see it as such a lucrative cash cow that they are beginning to go so far as even advertising for litigants.

• Lawyers from the Tobacco Control Resource Center at the Northeastern University School of Law placed the ads in The Boston Globe and the Boston Herald seeking nonsmoking bar and restaurant workers willing to sue over health problems they blame on secondhand smoke. [Associated Press, March 11, 1998]

Apparently, Congress agrees that lawyers should earn these ridiculous fees. The U.S. Senate passed an amendment as part of Senator John McCain's National Tobacco Policy and Youth Smoking Reduction Act to pay attorneys as much as $4,000 per hour for their work in bringing lawsuits against tobacco companies.

Senators voted down an amendment proposed by Sen. Lauch Faircloth (R-N.C.) which proposed to cap the fees of trial lawyers involved in tobacco litigation to $250 per hour. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) called the cap "more than a fair wage." Without a limit, he said, the Senate could help to create "an exclusive club of trial lawyer billionaires."

Following the defeat in Congress of Sen. John McCain's National Tobacco Policy and Youth Smoking Reduction Act (S. 1415), 46 state attorneys general, led by NY State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, and major tobacco manufacturers sat down and ironed out the Master Settlement Agreement (MSA), based on the same plan that had already been rejected by Congress. It was in effect, a new national sales tax on cigarettes, the cost estimated at $240 billion over the first 25 years.

Private lawyers representing 40 states in their suits against the tobacco industry stand to get more than $14.7 billion over 25 years. Four national firms - based in Seattle, Mississippi and South Carolina - stand to reap the most. Together, these firms represent two dozen of the states and could reap the lion's share of $10 billion in fees from those states.

What each lawyer is paid has been kept private, in accordance with the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement. Only the total amount awarded lawyers by each state were made public.

What the Master Settlement Agreement essentially created was a national government/tobacco cartel that harmed both consumers and small businesses by increasing cigarette prices and restricting competition. It was a backroom deal between state governments and big tobacco companies.

State attorneys general came out winners as they expanded their own power. Trial lawyers associated with the state lawsuits were also BIG winners.

Analyses by a watchdog group show that some lawyers were paid more than $15,000 per hour. Individual firms that originated the lawsuits and were subsequently used by many states, reportedly will reap as much as $3 billion. Private attorneys in Texas, Mississippi and Florida made out like bandits, fleecing tobacco companies, smokers and taxpayers for $8.2 billion in legal fees -- billions more than the lawyers themselves had demanded!

Now, don't miss this double standard!

Do they also sue the homosexual partner of AIDS patients? Do they sue the condom manufacturer when his government issued condom fails to protect its user from disease or unplanned pregnancy? Do they sue the abortion industry in light of the fact that women having abortions are 400 times more likely to contract breast cancer? Do they sue the brewery for their role in the millions of alcoholics in treatment programs or those who crash their car into innocent bystanders?

No!

Why not? Because suggesting that a homosexual partner might be responsible for spreading AIDS would be insensitive, defective condoms would suggest an irresponsible government agency, they consider abortion as "health care", and hey, even judges enjoy a stiff shot at the end of a stressful day.

Folks, it has nothing to do with health
     ... it's about your money!

This attempt to disguise outrageous double standards as a concern for your health is as offensive as it is transparent. Whenever they can get away with it, these liberal socialists show nothing but contempt for the constitution of the United States and is willing to do whatever it takes to strip you of your money and freedom.

A hundred years ago the anti-smoking people claimed that smoking caused Tuberculosis. That was a lie. Tuberculosis is caused by the bacillus Mycobacterium Tuberculosis, a known fact in the 1880’s. The anti-smoking group lied then, they are lying now.

There is an old saying, "Follow the Money". The anti smoking industry is a multi-billion dollar a year industry, a real money maker – most of it tax dollars. I ask you, would these people lie for money? I think the answer is obvious.

Another benificiary of the tobacco wars are the Insurance Companies Profiting from Smoking