Tobacco industry use of personal responsibility rhetoric in public relations and litigation: disguising freedom to blame as freedom of choice.

We examined the tobacco industry's rhetoric to frame personal responsibility arguments. The industry rarely uses the phrase "personal responsibility" explicitly, but rather "freedom of choice." When freedom of choice is used in the context of litigation, the industry means that those who choose to smoke are solely to blame for their injuries.

Opposite trends in the consumption of manufactured and roll-your-own cigarettes in Spain (1991-2020).

Objective: The aim of this study is to describe trends in the consumption of manufactured and roll-your-own cigarettes between 1991 and 2012 in Spain, and to project these trends up to 2020.

Methods: We estimated daily consumption per capita during 1991-2012 using data on sales of manufactured cigarettes (20-packs) and rolling tobacco (kg) from the Tobacco Market Commission, and using data of the Spanish adult population from the National Statistics Institute. We considered different weights (0.

The debate on regulating menthol cigarettes: closing a dangerous loophole vs freedom of choice.

The Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act exempted menthol from a flavoring additive ban, tasking the Tobacco Products Safety Advisory Committee to advise on the scientific evidence on menthol. To inform future tobacco control efforts, we examined the public debate from 2008 to 2011 over the exemption. Health advocates regularly warned of menthol's public health damages, but inconsistently invoked the health disparities borne by African American smokers.

Cigarettes become a dangerous product: tobacco in the rearview mirror, 1952-1965.

Tobacco control's unparalleled success comes partly from advocates broadening the focus of responsibility beyond the smoker to include industry and government. To learn how this might apply to other issues, we examined how early tobacco control events were framed in news, legislative testimony, and internal tobacco industry documents. Early debate about tobacco is stunning for its absence of the personal responsibility rhetoric prominent today, focused instead on the health harms from cigarettes.

Beyond cheeseburgers: the impact of commonsense consumption acts on future obesity-related lawsuits.

Since 2004, 25 states have passed Commonsense Consumption Acts (CCAs) to shield the food industry from civil liability for claims arising from obesity-related health harms. These laws continue to be introduced. CCAs have generally been discussed in terms of "tort reform.

Product liability.

Product liability litigation has made important contributions to tobacco control, especially by uncovering incriminating industry documents and publicizing product dangers and industry misconduct. WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) Article 19 encourages Parties to strengthen legal procedures to facilitate these lawsuits and to establish mechanisms for mutual assistance. Creative lawyers will continue to find ways to bring the tobacco industry to justice in forums around the world.

Allying tobacco control with human rights: invited commentary.

The recognition that tobacco control and human rights concerns overlap is quite recent. This commentary reflects upon tobacco control's growth through allying with other domains, and details a particular effort to build alliances between tobacco control and human rights practitioners.

The role of litigation in tobacco control.

There is now 50-years of experience in the United States litigating against the tobacco industry. As the base of evidence regarding health effects has evolved and new legal strategies have emerged, successive waves of litigation have occurred. The many failures by the first and second waves were followed by some notable successes in the third.

Tobacco industry lawyers as "disease vectors".

Objective: Despite their obligation to do so, tobacco companies often failed to conduct product safety research or, when research was conducted, failed to disseminate the results to the medical community and to the public. The tobacco company lawyers' role in these actions was investigated with a focus on their involvement in company scientific research, claims of attorney-client privilege and work-product cover, document concealment, and litigation tactics.

Methods: Searches of previously secret internal tobacco industry documents located at Tobacco Documents Online.

Application of law to the childhood obesity epidemic.

Childhood obesity is in important respects a result of legal policies that influence both dietary intake and physical activity. The law must shift focus away from individual risk factors alone and seek instead to promote situational and environmental influences that create an atmosphere conducive to health. To attain this goal, advocates should embrace a population-wide model of public health, and policymakers must critically examine the fashionable rhetoric of consumer choice.

Applying lessons from tobacco litigation to obesity lawsuits.

This discussion examines the use of litigation as a strategy to protect the public health. The history of tobacco litigation provides a model to evaluate potential litigation strategies against other industries that pose a threat to public health, particularly the food industry. This paper demonstrates that although legislation would be a preferable solution, lessons from the tobacco wars suggest that effective national legislation is unlikely at the present time.

How tobacco-friendly science escapes scrutiny in the courtroom.

Although the tobacco industry helped fund the attack on "junk science," it has created its own dubious scientific scholarship for its expert witnesses. We suggest that plaintiffs' counsel should be proactive in using Daubert hearings to exclude the tobacco industry defendants' scientific expert witnesses by introducing documentation, such as we have found through researching previously privileged internal industry documents, to prove that much of their proposed testimony was developed by and for their lawyers.

Private enforcement: litigation as a tool to prevent obesity.

Private enforcement, or litigation, has played a historic role in protecting public health in the United States. Litigation is often employed as a means to protect public health when government regulation is absent or ineffectual. Litigation has been successfully employed to control both asbestos and tobacco and is poised for success in combating the obesity epidemic.