We have no love for cigarette manufacturers, and it is clearly advisable to avoid the horrible health risks of smoking.
Still, massive legal judgments against tobacco companies by Americans who smoked despite knowing the obvious health risks were unjust. The judgments took away the responsibility of individual smokers who had made the terribly unwise decision to light up.
Now, however, a whole new front for misguided tobacco-related lawsuits has opened: Two makers of “smokeless” tobacco will have to pay $5 million to the family of a smokeless-tobacco user who died of mouth cancer. It is “the first wrongful-death settlement won from a chewing tobacco company,” The Associated Press reported.
Unfortunately, it probably will not be the last.
And it seems only a matter of time before there will be lawsuits against manufacturers of fattening foods by the families of people who died of illnesses related to obesity.