Tobacco Documents Online

Copyright 1993 American Broadcasting Companies, Inc., All rights reservedl ABC NEWS SHOW: WORLD NEWS TONIGHT WITH PETER JENNINGS' JANUARY 7, 1993 LENGTH: 4005 words BODY: ANNOUNCER: From ABC, this is World News Tonight with Peter Jennings. Sitting in, tonight, Forrest Sawyer. FORREST SAWYER: Now while that attack was- underway in one part of Mogadishu, bandits opened fire on a UNICEF relief truck on the other side of the:city and hijacked it. Two relief workers in the truck were wounded. In Sarajievo:today, some help at last for the residents of that home for the elderly where a dozen people have frozen, to death just, this week. UN troops arrived and installed! five stoves five months after they were first requested, and'd doctors began examining the 108, surviving residents to see if any are so ill they need to evacuated immediately. In a mornent,,a dyingman accuses the tobacco: industry of lying to him about the dangers of smoking, On the American Agenda, vaccinating babies against a, dangerous liver disease. And the cranes are home: again in central Florida. ### FORR'EST'SAWYER: On the day when the federal government officially, released~its report saying,secondhand tobacco smoke kills thousands of people every year, a trial involving ~the tobacco industry is underway in Belleville, IDlinois. A long-time smoker is suing the company he says tricked him into starting and continuing, a habit, that is killing hiinL Here's ABC's Chris Bury.. CHRIS' BURY: [COOPER'] Retired army sergeant Charles Cooper is dying,of lung cancer at age 51'. [ CIGARET'TES] Doctors blame it on his smoking,up to two packs of Winstons a day for more than 30 years. [COMMERCIALS] Cooper is trying to convince a jury that RJ1 Reynolds, the maker of Winstons,,conspired with The Tobacco Institute, an industry trade group, to deceive smokers like him. CHARLES COOPER: I knew that smoking, was bad~ for your health: The deceiving part is the way that they represent their products. CHRIS BURY: [COURT SKETCHES] CoopertestRfied he was confused about the risks of smoking, though dbctiors had warned him to quit'. His lawsuit accuses the tobacco industry of hiding evidence it had that smoking,causes cancer. Lawyers for RJ Reynolds deny that. JOHN STRAUCH /RJ REYNOLDS LAWYER: It's d'2fficult for me to believe:that, someone can credibly claim, "I was fooled or misled about the dangers of smoking", when you've had! 25 years of warnung, labels. CHRIS BURY: [SUi] The case oni trial' here is the first, test of the June Supreme Court ruling that warning labels alone don't protect tobacco companies from

smokers' lawsuits, not if smokers can: prove they were deceived. ACTO'R':! [ CIGARETI'E' COlvlMERCIAL] Well„everybody's smoking,Winston.CHRI'S BURY: The core of Cooper's argument is that he was fooled!by billions of dollars worth of tobacco company advertising and publ'ic relations. RICHARD DAYNARD1/ TOBACCO PRODUCTS LIABILITY PRO7E CT: [PRO CIGARETTE ARTICLE] They've made a four million dollar bet that this kind of advertising and PR is gping to overwhelm in the minds of'their customers the public health information that people like the Surgeon General are taying, tio get out. CHRIS BURY: Cooper is suing for three million dollnrs, but juriies have been consistiently unsympathetic to srnokers who blame tobacco companies for health probliems. After more than 3C1© such lawsuits, no one has collected a cent. Chris Bury, ABC News, Belleville, Illinois.