EDITORIAL
Putting truth into action: using the evidence for justice
1 Tobacco Law Center, William Mitchell College of Law, Saint Paul, Minnesota, USA
2 School of Public Health, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
D Douglas Blanke
Tobacco Law Center, William Mitchell College of Law, 875 Summit Avenue, Saint Paul, Minnesota 55105-3076, USA; doug.blanke@wmitchell.edu
Keywords: depositions; litigations; testimony; tobacco documents
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
The World Health Organization (WHO) calculates that, over the course of the 20th century, tobacco industry products claimed 100 million victims.1 With no disrespect to the statisticians in Geneva, we’d put the toll at 100 million and one. In the tobacco epidemic, as in all of history’s wars, the first casualty was truth. For half a century, it lay beneath a mountain of cover-ups, distortions and lies. And we’re still digging out.
Fortunately, facts are stubborn things. They have a way of prevailing, sooner or later, against even the most sophisticated of corporate conspiracies. Sooner or later. That’s the problem, of course, because, in the end, buying time is what this conspiracy is about. "Doubt is our product," as a candid Brown & Williamson document puts it.2 A decade of doubt means billions of dollars in profits. Not to mention 50 million victims.
That’s why the truth matters, and matters
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