'Smoking Kills' Says Big Tobacco: Lawsuit Forces Companies To Run Healthy Ads

The largest tobacco companies in the U.S. will be running advertisements on television and in newspapers starting this weekend telling people of the harmful side effects of smoking.

The ads are part of a Justice Department lawsuit brought against the companies in 1999. The ruling came down in 2006 that the tobacco companies had to take corrective actions for not being upfront with the public about the harmful side effects of their products. Legal wrangling and appeals over messaging and wording delayed the messages until now.

Screen Shot 2017-11-26 at 11 — Smoking Kills, Says Big Tobacco Screenshot

“Smoking kills, on average, 1,200 Americans. Every day. More people die every year from smoking than from murder, AIDS, smoking than from murder, AIDS, suicide, drugs, car crashes, and alcohol, suicide, drugs, car crashes, and alcohol, combined,” reads one of the ads.

The ads will be paid for by Altria, R. J. Reynolds Tobacco, Lorillard and Philip Morris USA. They will appear in 50 major U.S. newspapers on five Sunday editions between now and March and the will appear on ABC, NBC and CBS on primetime television during the week. The television ads will run Monday through Thursday for a year. The messages were finally agreed upon in October.

“It’s a pretty significant moment. This is the first time they have had to ‘fess up and tell the whole truth,” said Cliff Davis of the American Cancer Society to NBC news.

While some anti-smoking advocates are happy that the tobacco companies will have to own up to the danger of their products, some feel as though action took too long.

“It’s both an important victory and a frustrating one,” said Matthew Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids to the New York Times. “[Tobacco companies] have spent millions of dollars and a decade of time resisting a court order that simply requires them to publish truthful facts about their products and their behavior.”

Earlier versions of the proposed commercials were to have been tougher on the companies including sample text such as: “We told Congress under oath that we believed nicotine is not addictive. We told you that smoking is not an addiction and all it takes to quit is willpower. Here’s the truth: Smoking is very addictive. And it’s not easy to quit. We manipulated cigarettes to make them more addictive.” The companies fought the earlier messages.

Smoking in the U.S. has come down significantly in the past 50 years according to government statistics, 15 percent of adults smoked in 2015 compared to 43 percent in 1965.

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