Table 1

Responses to charges about marketing defective cigarettes

Subject category	Case	Quotes from transcript
Defective products	Boeken¹⁶	“Smoking is dangerous. People who smoke are taking a risk. There is no such thing as a safe cigarette.”
	Blankenship¹⁸	“Cigarettes are inherently dangerous, but not defective.”
		“Just because a product is risky does not make it defective. In our society there are lots of risky products that are not defective. Guns can shoot you, knives can cut you, and we all unfortunately know what eating too much fatty food can do to you. But that doesn’t make those products defective. Those are inherent risks of those products.”
		“…unfortunately the inherent risks of cigarettes are that you smoke them, you will develop increased risks of developing lung cancer and emphysema. But that is a natural inherent consequence of using the product. It has nothing to do with anything that the cigarette manufacturers do.”
Nicotine manipulation	Schwarz¹⁷	“Nicotine is something that is in tobacco. It [nicotine] is not something that’s added to tobacco.”
	Engle^19,²⁰	“Nature put nicotine in the tobacco plant… just like caffeine is a natural part of the coffee bean.”
		“…blending tobacco is an art; it’s not a nicotine driven science. It is more like the work of, for lack of a better example, a wine maker or someone who makes cigars who are doing it for taste.”
		“…the tar deliveries are a result of blend. The tobacco companies blend first for taste and second for tar. There is no effort to blend for nicotine. Nicotine follows tar. The companies blend for taste because that’s what smokers want.”
Nicotine addiction	Engle^19,²⁰	“…there is nothing about smoking that keeps a person from quitting.”
	Engle^19,²⁰	“…there is more to smoking than just nicotine…46 million people have quit smoking. Most by simply deciding to quit.”
	Boeken¹⁶	“Is smoking addictive? Yes. But even addicted smokers can quit. They do it all the time…nothing Philip Morris said or did take away from Mr. Boeken’s freedom to quit smoking.”
	Schwarz¹⁷	“There is no evidence, none whatsoever that if Philip Morris had not come up with Merit cigarettes that she would have quit – none.”
	Schwarz¹⁷	“Ammonia is naturally occurring in tobacco…so you’re not adding anything to it that isn’t already there. Ammonia adds quality and flavor…smokers may like their smoke more because of ammonia in it, but that’s not spiking cigarettes with nicotine.”
Consumer awareness	Engle^19,²⁰	“There is no question that smoking involves risks. But of all the consumer products manufactured and sold in the United States over the last century, none have had risks that have been better understood and better appreciated by consumers than that of the health risks of smoking. None.”
Consumer awareness	Engle^19,²⁰	“…there was no fraud. You can’t defraud somebody by hiding from them something they already know about. People who made the choice to smoke over the course of years knew these health risks and well knew that smoking can be hard to stop once you start.”
	Blankenship¹⁸	“Your common sense tells you that everyone has known that smoking is bad for you, and they have known for a long time.”
	Blankenship¹⁸	“…in 1604, King James wrote a counterblast to tobacco…in the early 1900’s 16 states banned cigarettes…in 1938, Larry, Curly and Moe won the contest from the Coffin Nail Cigarette Company on Tobacco Row…in 1954, 90 percent of Americans say they’ve heard smoking causes lung cancer...the 64 Surgeon General’s report comes out, bang cigarettes: tried and found guilty…in 1990 96 percent of Americans thought that cigarette smoking was harmful to health.”
	Boeken¹⁶	“Philip Morris and the other tobacco companies have said smoking is risky. But people didn’t hear that because they still heard the tobacco companies not falling in line with the Surgeon General, not admitting flat out that smoking causes cancer.”
		“Did people smoke because of what the tobacco companies said? The answer is no. Look at what happened to the smoking rates over the years?”
		“Philip Morris and the other tobacco companies did not help like they should have. But it is simply not true that they stopped the public health message from getting through.”
	Schwarz¹⁷	“She started smoking as an 18 year old. She knew it was dangerous.”
		“All of their ingredients have been disclosed to the government…the federal government has never requested removal of any ingredient in Philip Morris cigarettes.”