EARLY IN 1998, the Journal of the American Medical Association published a searing attack on tobacco companies. In the editorial, editor George D. Lundberg, former surgeon general C. Everett Koop, and former FDA commissioner David Kessler declared,

For years, the tobacco industry has marketed products that it knew caused serious disease and death. Yet, it intentionally hid this truth from the public, carried out a deceitful campaign designed to undermine the public's appreciation of these risks, and marketed its addictive products to children. . . . It claims it does not want children to smoke and then promotes advertising that appeals primarily to children. . . . By these actions, the tobacco makers have shown themselves to be a rogue industry, unwilling to abide by ordinary ethical business rules and social standards.62

In the same issue, the magazine ran the results of a study done at the University of California, San...