Reply #12: Disagree [View All]

[Squeech]

at least in the case of cigarettes.

It has been (laboriously) proven in court that the tobacco companies knew about the health risks and addictive properties of smoking and engaged in hugely deceptive practices to conceal those facts from their consumers. I remember magazine ads, back when I was a kid, that said "Eight out of ten doctors smoke Camels," with photos of benignly smiling men in medical garb, trying to reinforce the notion that cigarettes had the implicit approval of medical science. It wasn't true, of course; Big Tobacco systematically lied, all the while manipulating the chemistry of their products to make them even more poisonous and addictive. I think this is tortious behavior.