Subject: HUGH RODHAM, HILLARY'S BROTHER, TO GET MILLIONS FROM TOBACCO From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Dr. Jai Maharaj) Date: Wed, Dec 9, 1998 20:02 EST Message-id: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> HUGH RODHAM, BROTHER OF HILLARY, TO GET $ MILLIONS FROM TOBACCO By Holman W. Jenkins Jr. The Wall Street Journal Wednesday, December 9, 1998 At the End of Tobacco Road The whole usefulness of an economy is to make people better off, but sometimes we need help from the tweaking hand. For decades tobacco litigation has made a lot of lawyers a little better off, but the benefits were too dispersed to yield the full measure of satisfaction. With last month's settlement of the state Medicaid suits, a remedy has been vouchsafed: Lawyers will benefit more than ever from tobacco, but not such a wide swath of them to dilute the joy. No, it will be a concentrated dose, an initial shot of $1.25 billion and then perhaps $500 million a year, administered directly to the bank accounts of a few hundred individuals. In Texas, attorneys have just redone their sums and concluded they're owed $25 billion, 10 times what they were asking a week ago. Florida is still wrangling over an exact amount, but at a dinner attended by Governor Chiles, they were told "You can send in a bill for a billion and a half, and no one will care," according to one of those present. Hugh Rodham, brother of Hillary, expects to receive tens of millions--enough to make a material change in the circumstances of this formerly not very successful attorney, politician and sometime radio host. Normally we like think of an industry also making its customers better off, and what would make the millions who are going to smoke anyway better off? A safer cigarette. Here we have a case of government failure, not market failure. One state attorney general who trails less than the usual dense cloud of hypocrisy is Colorado's Gale Norton. She didn't sue on hokey, legally fraudulent Medicaid grounds. She sued under consumer and antitrust laws, citing what she calls industry "collusion" in keeping a safer cigarette off the market. She also offers a regret about last month's settlement: It contains no immunity provision that would have loosened the hold of the industry's legal departments and let its undoubted research prowess flow in the direction of developing a truly safer product. "I'm not an antismoking extremist," she says. Our legal system is the reason the intensely competitive cigarette industry, unlike all others, does not seek to win customers with better products. A safer cigarette would have to deliver enough addictive nicotine to keep smokers happy; otherwise nobody would smoke it. Yet the cigarette companies were forbidden to acknowledge in words that you could hear what everyone knows, that people smoke for nicotine. To create a safer cigarette, they would have to identify which ingredients in smoke cause the worst hazards, but that would be tantamount to admitting cigarettes were a health hazard. We know from industry documents that, by the 1950s, powerful voices were already acknowledging the universally recognized dangers of smoking and calling internally for research to mitigate the risks. Companies even made substantial progress, reducing benzopyrene, a carcinogen, to safer levels. But in our legal system, we were already evolving toward a theory of liability that says somebody must pay for every bad thing that happens, regardless of actual responsibility. The industry's lawyers insisted it couldn't afford to acknowledge that bad things happen from smoking. Any industry forced to feign ignorance of the essential character of its product will, necessarily, behave in strange ways. To throw the estimates in the air, some 20 million customers have died from smoking since the 1960s. If the automobile had remained as dangerous as it was 35 years ago, last year's highway death toll would have been 135,000 rather than 41,500. Do we suppose unfettered competition among makers of nicotine delivery systems could not have accomplished a similar degree of technological progress? But, hey, we must weigh this against the need of tobacco lawyers to make a living. Whether from careful design or a succession of witless accidents, government policy has decided that tobacco progress should be measured in legal fees and tax dollars, not in safer products. Now we've come full circle. The tobacco companies were being sued because they didn't develop a safer cigarette, which they didn't because they were afraid of being sued. In the Washington state case, lawyers at Brown & Williamson were shown quashing a high-nicotine tobacco, capable of giving more kick for less tar, fearing it would give ammunition for lawsuits. Over at Liggett & Myers, executives were pressured by industry mates to drop project XA, a tobacco with fewer noxious elements, because it might sully the industry's legal defenses. Hardly better were Premier, Eclipse and Accord, supposedly safer brands marketed by RJR and Philip Morris, but adhering to the basic hypocrisy that a safer cigarette is one with reduced nicotine--the FDA's view. No one is safer if they keep smoking their old brands instead. We guess from a certain vantage last month's settlement shows how democracy's sausage-making impulses can satisfy a little bit of everybody's wishes. However hypocritically, the lawyers and politicians have reinforced the notion that nice boys and girls don't smoke. Those now dying of lung cancer have someone else to blame; those who are violently antismoking can feel their sentiments have been championed. The government has what it wants, a massive new tax, and 45 million smokers have ducked out from under the shadow of prohibition. So much deftly balanced hypocrisy has been brought to us by the trial bar, our new fourth branch of government, and its political wing, the Democratic Party. Unpretty it has been, but perhaps the only redeeming feature has been the sheer rationality of the industry documents that were such a fanfare in the tobacco cases: Nicotine is an "addictive drug;" cigarette companies sell "drug-delivery devices;" "the technique of administration by smoking has considerable psychological advantages." Since Napoleon, the purpose of bureaucracy has been to gather information and draw rational conclusions. It is not shocking that the cigarette companies should have done so. We all would have been better off if they could have been more open about it. As for the Hugh Rodhams of the world, their crusade ended just in time. The last round of cases were pushing close to the truth. The lawyers who've made fortunes in tobacco litigation have themselves played a primary role in stalling a safer cigarette that might have saved millions of lives. Not for commercial use. Solely to be fairly used for the educational purposes of research and open discussion. - - - - - Maybe Hugh will make donations to the CLinton defense team. Posted by: The Raven (aka Dennis from Lebanon) 12/09/98 04:56:59 PST - - - - - > To: The Raven Here in Florida , the lead atty lives in Pensacola, Fred levin, he and another atty did all the work , they came up with a sceme that brought Hugh in at the end to get Childes aboard for their FEES, He will get somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 million for being Hillary's brother , never did any work on the case. High Crimes and bribery > From: scooby321 ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) 12/09/98 05:01:53 PST - - - - - > To: The Raven Tobacco has been the scourge on society for the last 25 years only. Lawyers have been the scourge for the past 2500 years. When it comes to the evils perpetrated on society by these two villans, I'll side with tobacco every time. > From: major ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) 12/09/98 05:18:04 PST - - - - - > To: major We need to use the Clinton approved and politically correct term "Big tobacco" to distinguish from small tobacco firms that make cigars and are OK. > From: The Raven (aka Dennis from Lebanon) 12/09/98 05:21:15 PST - - - - - <b><font size=5><marquee>IMPEACH CLINTON! DO IT NOW!</marquee></font></b><br> - - - - - Source of the above and more news and discussion: http://www.freerepublic.com/ Click on the "Latest on Clinton" link at http://www.flex.com/~jai
