With the Autumn Leaves Festival as a backdrop, history buffs and festival attendees gathered in the Mount Airy Museum of Regional History courtyard Sunday afternoon to hear Billy Yeargin deliver a lecture about tobacco and American culture. Yeargin, a professor with extensive knowledge of the history of the tobacco industry, was the guest speaker for the October “History Talks” program at the museum. He spoke at 2 p.m. on Sunday about tobacco’s impact on Amerian society over the years.

Though the event was originally scheduled to be held inside the museum, organizers decided to move it outside to the courtyard where many festival-goers sat throughout the weekend to eat and socialize. Some people who visited the courtyard on Sunday were surprised to find that a lecture was taking place there, and they stopped to listen while they ate festival treats. Others came specifically to hear the presentation.

Yeargin said prior to the event, “I love the festival atmosphere. I think they’ve done a great job putting this together. It preserves the footprints of our culture, and that’s what’s important. That’s the purpose. It reminds us of who we are.”

The professor has spoken once before at the museum. He spoke in 2009 about music and culture, but his focus on Sunday was on tobacco and culture. He spoke about the history of tobacco, of its cultivation by Native Americans here and the gradual development of a thriving tobacco industry. Yeargin said that up until the French and Indian War, tobacco was used as a currency in North America. He said many of the founding fathers were tobacco farmers.

“Tobacco was the backbone, not just of the economy, but of culture and society,” he remarked.

Yeargin also talked about different types of tobacco and techniques that were developed over the years. He then spoke about the tobacco industry in Surry County and what it still means today. According to Yeargin, there were 21 plants for tobacco production in Surry County in 1893, and that grew to 45 in 1927, which employed 2,875 people here.

“Tobacco ruled the roost in the county,” he said. Tobacco is still a multi-million dollar industry in the county, he noted, though tobacco culture has declined.

Rick Smith, a docent at the history museum, listened attentively to the presentation. He grew up on a tobacco farm in Westfield. After the presentation, he asked Yeargin if he could chant like a tobacco auctioneer. Yeargin spoke a little bit about the history of the chant and gave a short demonstration.

Smith said afterward, “I thought it was very interesting from the aspect of tobacco culture and industry.”

Smith invited his son, Richard, to attend the lecture. Richard Smith works as a spokesperson for R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company. He said he came because he obviously has a personal interest in the subject, and he is from a family which grew tobacco.

“I’m always looking to learn more, because history is an important part of what we do,” he noted. The RJR employee said he knew about the different types of tobacco, but he learned a lot about the history of the tobacco industry that he did not know prior to the lecture.

The museum director also asked several questions after the presentation. Edwards said, “I learned a lot.”

According to information provided by the museum, Yeargin teaches U.S. history at Johnston Community College and Vance-Granville Community College and teaches Southern culture for Osher Lifelong Learning program at Duke University. He was former executive director of the Tobacco Growers Information Committee, was a spokesman for the U.S. Tobacco Growers, was agriculture liaison to former N.C. Governor James Hunt Jr., and created and directed the World Tobacco Auctioneers Championship for R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company. He has also been executive director of the N.C. Sweet Potato Commission. He graduated from Oak Ridge Military Academy, holds an M.A. in Liberal Studies from Duke University and has studied European history and politics at the University of Oxford. He has published two books on N.C. tobacco culture: North Carolina Tobacco, a History and Remembering North Carolina Tobacco.

The History Talks program is a series of history lectures at the museum that take place each third Sunday. The project is made possible in part by a grant from the North Carolina Humanities Council, a statewide non-profit and affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Plain packaging will slash smoking rates – and cigarette-makers know it. In 1967, as a fresh-faced researcher looking to make an impression in my first real job, I conducted an experiment to assess the frequency of cigarette advertising on television. I was astonished when the study revealed Melburnians were shown at least one cigarette advertisement every 12 minutes.

Thankfully, things have come a long way since then, with Australia leading the world in tobacco-control initiatives such as banning cigarette advertising, requiring health warnings on cigarette packs and prohibiting smoking in pubs and clubs.
These initiatives have contributed to a dramatic reduction in Australians who smoke and those who become seriously ill or die each year from smoking-related illnesses.
However, we are facing yet another fight with the tobacco industry, as the federal government prepares to debate legislation on plain packaging of cigarette packs, the draft of which was released yesterday by federal Health Minister Nicola Roxon.

The issue may be new, but the players are the same. Once again, we have a battle on our hands to halt the tobacco industry’s relentless quest to entice Australians to risk serious illness and death by beginning, or continuing to, smoke.
Make no mistake: a cigarette pack is more than just a harmless container. As other forms of tobacco advertising have been banned, cigarette packaging has become the industry’s primary vehicle for appealing to potential smokers, particularly our children. Through the clever application of colour, illustration and design, companies are able to create a point of difference for their carcinogenic products.
The proposed plain packaging legislation will end this deadly form of promotion and make significant inroads into reducing rates of smoking initiation and consumption, thereby saving some of the 15,000-plus lives lost in Australia every year to tobacco.
While the tobacco industry will have you believe otherwise, the evidence suggests the majority of Victorians support this move. A recent Cancer Council study revealed 73 per cent of Victorians approve of plain packaging for cigarettes. More significantly, 57 per cent of smokers approve.
There is no greater barometer to the likely success of a proposed tobacco control initiative than the response of the tobacco industry. In this case, it has been pouring millions of dollars into fighting these changes, their efforts spearheaded by the Alliance of Australian Retailers, a so-called “peak body” that was created shortly before last year’s federal election and largely funded by Philip Morris, British American Tobacco and Imperial Tobacco.
The tobacco industry’s campaign is fronted by retailers who claim the legislation will be disruptive and costly for small business. When then have the big tobacco companies suddenly become so concerned about the plight of small Australian businesses that they have invested more than $5 million in this campaign?
If plain packaging was not effective, why are they spending so much money trying to stop the legislation? The tobacco industry knows that plain packaging has enormous potential to cut smoking rates. It also knows the passage of this legislation will send a message to the rest of the world, where almost 5 million people die each year because of their addiction to tobacco. After all, if plain packaging becomes policy here, it is likely to occur elsewhere and the tobacco industry knows it.
I commend the Australian government for its courage in tackling this vital public health issue and I urge all members of Parliament to take this opportunity to save the lives of thousands of young Australians by passing this of legislation. It is time to say enough.

A U.S. trial judge on Monday questioned whether a British American Tobacco PLC (BTI, BATS.LN) subsidiary remained subject to her landmark 2006 racketeering ruling against the tobacco industry. U.S. District Court Judge Gladys Kessler suggested that new legal precedent by the U.S. Supreme Court may upend her previous decision that British American Tobacco (Investments) Ltd. was liable under U.S. racketeering laws.

Kessler told U.S. government lawyers that she was “not at all clear” how they could avoid the implications of a recent Supreme Court ruling that may be favorable to BATCo.

Kessler, however, emphasized during a court status conference on Monday that her comments were not a ruling on the issue. The judge said she would consider legal arguments by both sides in the coming weeks before making a decision.

In a June ruling, the Supreme Court used a case involving National Australia Bank Ltd. (NABZY, NAB.AU) to limit the extraterritorial reach of U.S. securities laws.

BATCo now argues that the same legal logic should be used to limit the reach of U.S. racketeering laws against foreign defendants.

A BATCo lawyer said Monday that the company wants Kessler to resolve the issue as soon as possible.

Kessler famously ruled that the tobacco industry violated federal racketeering laws by engaging in a decades-long scheme to deceive the public about the dangers of smoking.

In a 2006 opinion that logged 1,653 pages, the judge ordered a variety of marketing, sales and advertising restrictions on the tobacco industry. She also required cigarette makers to issue corrective statements about the dangers of their products, which would appear on television, newspapers, product packaging and countertop displays in retail outlets.

Other defendants in the case include Altria Group Inc.’s (MO) Philip Morris subsidiary; Reynolds American Inc.’s (RAI) R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co.; and Lorillard Tobacco Co., a unit of Lorillard Inc. (LO).

A Justice Department lawyer said Monday that the agency’s upcoming legal arguments would make clear why BATCO should remain subject to Kessler’s ruling.

“Production for crop year 2010 will reach 65.39 million kg from 58.57 million kg in the previous crop year, due to an increase in the areas planted with tobacco,” NTA Administrator Edgardo D. Zaragoza said.
Data from the NTA showed that value of tobacco produced in crop year 2010 totaled P4.33 billion, about 7.7% higher than the P4.02 billion the previous year.

The same data showed that areas planted with tobacco rose 8.07% to 32,800 hectares from 30,352 hectares in the previous crop year.
Concentrated in Region II
Mr. Zaragoza added that the increase in areas planted was significant in the provinces of Isabela and Cagayan in Cagayan Valley.
“One factor is because planting tobacco has become more attractive to farmers than planting corn — the crop which Region 2 is known for — because of the higher price of tobacco,” Mr. Zaragoza said.
Farmgate price of tobacco for 2010 has averaged P70/kg, Mr. Zaragoza noted.
In comparison, an industry source cited corn’s price at P14.50-14.60/kg this week.
Hence, Mr. Zaragoza said, planting tobacco remained attractive even if 2010 prices were lower than 2009’s average of about P80/kg.
For crop year 2011, Mr. Zaragoza said the agency is targeting 74.1 million kg and an expansion of production areas to 36,593 hectares.
Concern
Mr. Zaragoza said his agency’s main concern now is to keep tobacco farming profitable for farmers and the industry afloat amid active state moves to discourage smoking through graphic cigarette labels and to increase the tax on tobacco products.
“The agency is geared towards ensuring that the industry will be sustained in the light of continuing threats such as tax hikes and anti-smoking campaigns which may affect demand for the product,” Mr. Zaragoza said.
He admitted that “it will be hard to manage due to threats to the industry, but the agency will try to minimize possible impact on the industry.”
Data from the NTA showed the country exported an annual average of 36.712 million kg of tobacco worth $151.621 million from 2007-2009 and imported, for blending purposes, an annual average of 81.079 million kg worth $299.507 million. — K. A. Martin

THE OMISSION of old reliables such as drink and cigarettes from the array of tax increases announced in the Budget represents a major lobbying victory for the alcohol and tobacco industries. Alcohol manufacturers successfully argued that increasing duty on beer, wine and spirits would cost jobs and lead to more cross-Border shopping. Cigarette manufacturers claimed that higher tobacco prices would lead to even more smuggling of contraband and counterfeit product.

Whatever the truth – and the health lobby has come up with plenty of counter-arguments – this is the first time in years that neither cigarettes nor alcohol have been hit for higher taxes in the Budget. The fact they were spared is all the more remarkable given the level of cuts in other areas.

Meanwhile, a four cent a litre increase in the duty on petrol will push prices up to almost €1.40, an all-time high according to the Automobile Association. Diesel is going up two cent a litre.

The Irish Heart Foundation accused the Government of “kowtowing” to the tobacco industry. “We are extremely disappointed with the decision not to increase the tax on tobacco products and put the health of our nation first. Mr Lenihan has fallen for the false allegation that higher prices will increase smuggling,” said its chief executive, Michael O’Shea.

The tobacco industry has organised a major lobbying campaign over the past year to highlight smuggling and its effects on exchequer revenues.

Alcohol Action Ireland described the decision to leave alcohol taxes unchanged as incomprehensible, and said duty was reduced in last year’s budget.

“When are we going to get real about the true costs of alcohol harm to this country?” asked its director, Fiona Ryan. “We are paying an estimated €3.7 billion a year in alcohol-related harm. Yet the one initiative which the World Health Organisation says is among the most effective in reducing alcohol-related harm, is the one initiative the Government refuses to actually implement.”

The AA said the increase in fuel taxation was disappointing but not surprising. The motorist was being treated as a cash cow by a Government short of money, said its spokesman, Conor Faughnan.

The world tobacco industry sells about six trillion cigarettes each year. The industry is highly concentrated with a handful of firms controlling the majority of the global tobacco market. The tobacco market was worth about $614 billion in 2009. China is the biggest market based on total cigarettes consumed. There are some 350 million smokers in China who consume around 2,200 billion cigarettes a year, or about 41% of the global total. However the industry in China is state-owned by the monopolistic China National Tobacco Company.

Outside of China, the four largest publicly-listed international tobacco companies account for about 46% of the global market according to British American Tobacco (BAT). BAT’s estimate of the market shares for 2009 are as follows:

Company Global Market Share
Phillip Morris International 16%
British American Tobacco 13%
Japan Tobacco 11%
Imperial Tobacco 6%
Philip Morris International (PM) is U.S.-based and BAT (BTI) and Imperial Tobacco (ITYBY.PK) are based in the U.K.

Companies that operate mainly in the domestic markets include Egypt’s Eastern Tobacco, Thailand’s Tobacco Monopoly, Bulgaria’s Bulgartabak, Taiwan’s Tobacco & Liquor Corp and Vietnam’s National Tobacco Corporation. The major American players in the U.S. market are Altria (MO), Lorillard (LO) and Reynolds American (RAI).
Based on the total number of cigarettes sold, the top five global brands are Marlboro, Winston, Mild Seven, L&M and Kent.

After China, the ten countries that consume the largest number of cigarettes are Russia, the U.S., Japan, Indonesia, India, Brazil, Ukraine, Turkey, Korea and Italy. The relationship between volume of cigarettes sold and volume of profits shipped are not consistent across markets. For example, Phillip Morris International’s sales in OECD countries accounts for one-third of total sales but accounts for 46% of total profits. And the tow-third of sales in non-OECD nations account for only 54% of its profits.

Due to their scope and scale of profits, tobacco companies transfer huge amounts of wealth from one region of the world to another. In 2008, around $20 billion was earned by tobacco companies from outside their home territories.
Phillip Morris International, which was spun off from Altria in 2008 is the world’s largest private tobacco company. Altria sells its products in the U.S. market while PHI sells them overseas. With 75,000 employees Philip Morris owns seven of the leading 15 global brands. In 2008, the company reported revenues of over $64 billion. PM repatriates about $10 billion in profits to the U.S. from global sales.

British American Tobacco is the second largest tobacco company in the world based on unit volume.The company’s 2008 revenue totaled about $50 billion. Some of the top brands owned by BAT include Dunhill, Pall Mall, Lucky Strike, Viceroy and Vogue. BAT also holds substantial stakes in Reynolds American and Indian Tobacco Company (ITC) of India. In terms of ownership, more than two-fifth of the shares are held by just 400 shareholders including the Canada Pension Plan Investment board. BAT repatriates about $6 billion from overseas earnings to U.K. More than three-fourths of the company’s sales are in the fast growing emerging markets.

U.K.-based Imperial Tobacco also sells the majority of cigarettes outside of U.K. The company repatriates about $4 billion in earnings to U.K. from abroad.

Altria, formerly known as Philip Morris, is the largest cigarette maker in the U.S. Reynolds America ranks the second, followed by Lorillard.

Stockholm, Sweden-based Swedish Match (SWMA) is involved in the production and sales of snuff and snus, chewing tobacco, cigars and pipe tobacco.The company does not make cigarettes and the “match” component makes up only 10% of its revenues.

In addition to shareholders, one of the biggest beneficiaries of sales of tobacco are the governments of various countries. Governments worldwide generated over $160 billion in the form of excise taxes, duties, income taxes, etc. from just nine companies in 2008.

Current and Future State of the industry:

Cigarette smoking is declining in the developed world due to unprecedented bans on cigarette usage in public places, restrictions on advertising, extremely high taxes, health warnings, limitations on retail display and other factors. In addition, the percentage of population who are smokers is reducing. As a result consumers in developed countries are switching to lower-priced offerings and alternatives to cigarettes such as smokeless tobacco, snus, etc.

While sales are declining in developed countries they booming in emerging markets. Tobacco makers are aggressively marketing in those markets in order to compensate for the declining sales in rich countries. However even in emerging markets governments are proposing tougher regulations governing the sales and marketing of tobacco products.

From an article in the New York Times:

This year, Philip Morris International sued the government of Uruguay, saying its tobacco regulations were excessive. World Health Organization officials say the suit represents an effort by the industry to intimidate the country, as well as other nations attending the conference, that are considering strict marketing requirements for tobacco.

“They’re using litigation to threaten low- and middle-income countries,” says Dr. Douglas Bettcher, head of the W.H.O.’s Tobacco Free Initiative. Uruguay’s gross domestic profit is half the size of the company’s $66 billion in annual sales.

…Cigarette companies are aggressively recruiting new customers in developing nations, Dr. Bettcher said, to replace those who are quitting or dying in the United States and Europe, where smoking rates have fallen precipitously. Worldwide cigarette sales are rising 2 percent a year.

But the number of countries adopting tougher rules, as well as the global treaty, underscore the breadth of the battleground between tobacco and public health interests in legal and political arenas from Latin America to Africa to Asia.

…The cigarette companies work together to fight some strict policies and go their separate ways on others. For instance, Philip Morris USA, a division of Altria Group, helped negotiate and supported the anti-smoking legislation passed by Congress last year and did not join a lawsuit filed by R. J. Reynolds, Lorillard and other tobacco companies against the Food and Drug Administration. So far, it is not protesting the agency’s new rules, proposed last week, requiring graphic images with health warnings on cigarette packs.

But Philip Morris International, the separate company spun out of Altria in 2008 to expand the company’s presence in foreign markets, has been especially aggressive in fighting new restrictions overseas.

The government’s war against tobacco marches on. Soon, it will be mandatory that all cigarette packs feature a large, disturbing picture intended to show the harmfulness of smoking. The FDA crafted 36 pictures in all, though that number will be reduced based on the public’s reaction. Nonetheless, there will be at least a handful of images that will soon adorn all cigarette packs.

Some of the pictures include: a man with smoke exiting a hole in his throat, a shot of someone sticking a cigarette in his arm simulating heroine use, a mother blowing smoke directly into her young child’s face, nasty teeth and lungs, and crying babies.
Seeing some of these pictures naturally made my heart swell with compassion and sympathy. How can tobacco companies possibly stay in business when they will be forced to slap these disgusting images on their products? That eventually could lead to a large number of unemployed workers who are unable to provide for their families.
I began thinking of ways the tobacco companies could counter the government’s blatant onslaught to destroy cigarette sales – the sale of a legal product, by the way. I think I found a logical solution to the problem, and it has to do with McDonald’s.
People love eating McDonald’s, but they are even more incentivized to do so during the restaurant’s extremely popular Monopoly game. Patrons purchase food and collect game pieces that can elicit impressive prizes.
This is precisely the route tobacco companies should take. They should accept, even embrace, these new government regulations. Then, instead of licking their wounds or feeling sorry for themselves, they should turn it into a game and have some fun with it.
It would work a little like this: People buy packs of cigarettes, stunning artwork and all. Their goal would to be to attain a wide variety of pictures. Then, after collecting the required number, they would cut out the images and mail them back to the tobacco companies.
Those people would then be entered into a drawing for a grand prize, such as a cruise, cash or a year’s supply of breath mints. People would have fun with these games and might trade with friends to satisfy their needs. It would be a variation of the old Pokemon trading cards. “I’ll trade you two crying babies for one smoking throat.” – “Deal.”
After the tobacco companies collect all of the pictures and dish out the grand prize and any additional prizes, they should shift their attention to government. The companies should place all of the images in a giant box and then mail it to the Capitol Building with a note that says, “Thanks for the ad campaign!”
That would symbolize taking a long, proverbial drag on an unfiltered menthol and then blowing a massive cloud of tobacco-laced smoke straight into the government’s face.

Life is full of hypocrisy. Tobacco causes a lot more harm than pot but the dangerous drug is legal and the relatively benign one isn’t. The Alberta government happily shovels tens of millions of dollars a year in tobacco taxes into general revenues. As well, the Alberta Heritage Savings Trust Fund has invested in Imperial Tobacco, which controls about 70% of Canada’s cigarette market. Fellow Albertans, the fund has tens of thousands of Imperial Tobacco shares worth millions of dollars.

It’s a drop in the bucket of our multi billion-dollar trust fund, to be sure.

Nevertheless, it’s a little strange that the province eagerly invests in a tobacco company while planning to sue Big Tobacco to recover billions of dollars in health-care costs.

It was bound to happen, I suppose.

B.C., Ontario and New Brunswick have already begun lawsuits against the tobacco industry.

Settlement

In the U.S., in the 1990s, the prospect of numerous individual lawsuits for negligence and fraud prompted four tobacco companies to agree to a monster settlement worth more than $200 billion over 25 years.

So, Alberta and other provinces must be drooling at the thought of squeezing vast amounts of money out of Big Tobacco in Canada as well.

Not that I’m particularly sympathetic to the tobacco industry. Yes, it’s hypocritical for the Alberta government to benefit from tobacco taxes and tobacco company shares and then turn around and announce plans to sue.

But Big Tobacco brought this upon itself because of decades of deception, evasion, misleading advertising and other sleight of hand designed to get more and more people hooked on cigarettes.

Les Hagen, of Action on Smoking and Health, was ecstatic when he heard the province was suing the tobacco industry. “It has been a long time coming,” he beamed.

And let’s be realistic. It’ll be a long time before this planned lawsuit is resolved. The statement of claim probably won’t be filed for months.

So what do we do in the meantime? Sure, smoking rates have fallen substantially.

Only about 18% of Canadians smoke and even fewer 15- to 19-year-olds light up.

It’s impractical to ban tobacco because we’d just have a modern-day version of prohibition. Hiking taxes even more is always a possibility. And why not? The more young people we can deter from taking up smoking the better.

Here’s another option. Force Big Tobacco to gradually remove nicotine from their cigarettes.

In other words, give the industry a deadline. By the target date — say, five years — their products have to be non-addictive.

Perhaps I’m dreaming. A couple of Canadian experts say if that was possible, the tobacco industry would have gone there a long time ago.

“You could take nicotine out of cigarettes. It doesn’t mean there’s going to be consumer acceptability of that,” says Rob Cunningham, a policy analyst with the Canadian Cancer Society.

Carcinogens

Low-nicotine products, like Quest cigarettes, just aren’t that popular, adds Michael Chaiton of the Ontario Tobacco Research Unit. And while nicotine is relatively easy to take out of cigarettes, it’s impossible to remove all the carcinogens that cause harm, he says.

Nevertheless, taking that first step is better than the status quo. Tobacco researchers in the U.S. have called for a nicotine reduction strategy, arguing it’s a worthwhile endeavour because it could dramatically reduce tobacco addiction.

Perhaps if tobacco executives were forced to use their products as a condition of staying in business, a safe cigarette would be rapidly invented.

The tobacco industry has won six trials in a row now in Florida, a small streak in a grinding war of attrition between cigarette manufacturers and lawyers representing some 8,000 plaintiffs who were turned loose on the court system after a Florida appeals broke up the nationwide Engle class action in 2003.

I recently spoke with Stephanie Parker, the Jones Day attorney who won a case last Thursday on behalf of Reynolds American. Parker has been representing tobacco companies since 1998 and will likely be for a long time ahead. The industry has refused to settle the Florida cases for more than token amounts, while trial lawyers are holding out for verdicts like the $20 million win Miami attorney Chuck Baumberger scored in April on behalf of a smoker’s family.

“The tobacco companies are not doing this like every other defendant, whether it’s insurance companies, pharmaceuticals or whatever, in which they evaluate the strength or weakness of the claims and try to settle,” said Baumberger, who has 340 more cases pending against the cigarette makers. “They are running a scorched-earth policy that will insure the majority of these cases will not reach trial in our lifetimes.”

Parker doesn’t disagree. She has trials scheduled into next year and “we’re not settling any of them,” she told me. “What we hope this means is, that the few large verdicts earlier this year were one-offs.”

The Engle case, filed in 1994, was ostensibly on behalf of every smoker in America. It went to trial in 1999 and a Florida jury ordered Reynolds, Philip Morris and other tobacco companies to pay $145 billion in punitive damages. A state appeals court later ordered the class dismantled and the Florida Supreme Court threw out the punitives as excessive. The state’s high court left intact, however, several findings of fact by the jury that future juries must abide by. Those include that cigarettes cause a variety of diseases including lung and bladder cancer and heart disease, are defective products, and that nicotine is addictive. The 8,000 or so plaintiffs who decided to sue after the class was dismantled still have to convince jurors that they were addicted to cigarettes, that tobacco caused their disease, and that they relied on deceptive marketing practices when they decided to smoke.

The tobacco industry won a critical decision at the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta in July when the court ruled that the Florida jury findings were too broad to apply automatically to all plaintiffs. But so far that only applies to the 4,000 or so cases that are in federal court in Florida; defense lawyers are still plotting strategy to put the ruling to work in state courts where the other 4,000 cases reside. At two weeks per trial, Baumberger says, the single judge handling tobacco cases in Broward County will take 30 years to clear his docket.

In the meantime, Parker says, jurors may be getting more receptive to the argument that smokers choose to smoke, and not that the tobacco industry snookered them into it. In the case decided Thursday, a Fort Lauderdale jury, after two-and-a-half weeks of trial, found that Arthur Rohr was addicted to cigarettes and that smoking caused his death, but that Rohr was 100% to blame.

Parker said she mounted a “traditional defense,” arguing “the smoker is well-informed and made a lifestyle risk to take the risk of smoking.” She said she hasn’t identified any clear differences between winning plaintiffs and losers so far.