The Tobacco Industry and Unsafe Products

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

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gh they do not vary inversely in his formulation. Rather: [T]he purpose of criminal law is to uphold basic natural duties, those which forbid us to injure other persons in their life and limb, or to deprive them of their liberty and property. And punishments are to serve this end. . . . [I]n a just society legal punishments will only fall upon those who display these faults (Rawls, 1971, pp. 314-15). It follows that institutions of civil society may properly enable compensation in some way to those who for various reasons may not be able to freely exercise liberty or as it were function as a full participant in the "original position," including but not limited to those whose crimes specifically infringed on their liberty. Literature Review Rawls's theory has been characterized as defining a moral utopia (e.g., Chilton, 1998) and as represntative of an "ethics of obligation" (Doyle, 1995, p. 7ff). It has been criticized for relying on a hypothetical in the manner of Kant's categorical imperative to account for real-world conditions (Doyle, 1995; Femia, 1998). What Doyle refers to as "pretended impartiality" fosters "intolerance for real differences" and may lead to state and legal claims of acting "in the name of the community
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