Under Attack.

For decades, tobacco companies rarely lost health-related lawsuits filed by consumers. This trend changed in the 1990s as the tobacco industry paid hundreds of billions of dollars in settlements. Law suits were filed by individuals, groups (class action suits), states, and cities. As a result, cigarette prices soared. Smoking was made even more expensive as sales taxes on cigarettes were increased in an effort to discourage smoking and to raise revenue. State and federal agencies, such as the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, launched antismoking campaigns, primarily targeted at youth. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), an estimated forty-seven million adults in the United States were cigarette smokers in 1999. While cigar smoking increased by almost 70 percent from the 1980s, mostly among males, overall adult smoking consistently declined during the decade. After a twenty-year downward trend, however, tobacco...