This research examines the tobacco industry's history of producing and selling unsafe products from the standpoint of criminal justice. Using primarily John Rawls's theory of distributive justice as the theoretical basis, the research will set forth the context in which "big tobacco" engaged in the national tobacco settlement and then discuss how Rawls's theory helps explain the behavior of the industry before and after that key case was closed.
The so-called master settlement of June 20, 1997, brought to a close litigation led by the state of Mississippi and supported by other states against Big Tobacco. The settlement mandated that major American tobacco firms pay $368.5 billion to settle a series of lawsuits "that effectively label[] Big Tobacco as an outlaw business, largely banned from promoting or marketing its product" (Mollenkamp, Levy, Menn, & Rothfeder, 1999, p. 18). In 1999, the US Dept. of Justice (DOJ) also sued Big Tobacco under the Medical Care Recovery Act (MCRA), the Medicare Secondary Payer (MSP) provisions, and the Racketeer-Influenced & Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO). The lawsuit under the first two acts, brought to collect out of Big Tobacco's profits the billions of federal dollars spent to treat tobacco-caused illnesses, was dismissed in 2001. As of March 2002, trial under RICO is scheduled to begin in 2003. Originally designed to target the "enterprises" of organized crime, RICO was aimed at Big Tobacco for conducting a pattern of illegal activities by defrauding the public. A RICO lawsuit bought in Brooklyn, N.Y., in 1999, was dismissed in June 2001 (R.J. Reynolds, 2001).
The fact that the tobacco industry's pattern of vigorously defending against both civil and criminal actions in state and federal courts was in place both before and after the 1997 settlement begs the question of why it acquiesced in the national tobacco settlement. Is it because the industry players and their advocates finally rejecte...