Anne Landman's Collection
It's not free choice if you're addicted
Abstract
This document was a Minnesota trial exhibit. It is a 'classic' and points out how the Tobacco Institute understood that if the industry ever admitted their product was addictive, their defense of "free choice" in liability suits would go right out the window.
Fields
- Quotes
I feel badly about my own lack of intelligence-gathering in this situation. But I don't think the questions O now raise are academic. Shook, Hardy reminds us, I'm told, that the entire matter of addiction is the most potent weapon a prosecuting attorney can have in a lung cancer/cigarette case. We can't defend continued smoking as 'free choice' if the person was 'addicted.'
- Company
- Tobacco Institute
- Author
- Knopick, P
- Recipient
- Kloepfer, W
Document Images
September 9, 1-980
: Z::ORaNDU"I
TO . Mr. Kloepfer
FROM: Mr Knopick
CONFIDENTIAL:
MINNESOTA TOBACCO LITIGATION
Attached please find the technical review of the conference which
led to Victor Cohn's "surprise" story of 8/30 that the National Insti-
tute of Drug Abuse wants "addicti~e" added to the cigarette warning.
Also, the tiny item in the ADAMHA newsletter which brought on
Cohn's story. I do not receive that publication.
I wonder if The Institute was caught unaware on this matter.
I have spoken previously with Pollin, current head of the National—
Institute on Drug Abuse. In July 1980, he sent me--and I made avail-
able throughout TI and reported in the NL--a monograph on "Cigarette
Smoking as a Dependence Process." In its foreword, Po11in says:
"Smoking is addictive." 1083,134
Other hints: In NL 233, we quoted Po11in saying that cigarette
smoking is the nation's leading drug problem among youths, despite
the rise in marijuana use.
In NL 188, we quoted Pollin's predecessor, Dr. Robert DuPont:
"Cigarette smoking is more addictive than using heroin, hooking two-
thirds of the people who ever smoke." '
Isn't the question twofold?
Did TI miss a chance to attend an d present information at NIDA's
1979 meeting which developed the "addictive" language?
Did TI see ADAMHA's newsletter and was it therefore better pre-
pared to respond when this matter became public?
TIMN 0107822
I feel badly about my own lack of intelligence-gathering in this
s=tuation. But I don't think the questions I now raise are academic.
S'.^.ook, Hardy reminds us, I'm told, that the entire matter
is the most potent weapon a prosecuting attorney can have
cancer/cigarette case. We can't defend continued smoking
choice" if the person was "addicted."
CONFIDENTIAL:
MINNESOTA TOBACCO LITIGATION
of addiction
in a lung
as "free
T083,1s5
