After the Civil War, the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison adopted some new causes, including abolition of tobacco. The government included cigarettes in combat rations in both world wars. The government, which now blames tobacco companies' duplicities for some substantial public health costs, has, since the 1964 Surgeon General's report, officially certified cigarettes as dangerous. For more than three decades the government has required increasingly stern health warnings to be printed on cigarette packs and advertising. Of course this government still subsidizes the growing of tobacco and writes budgets with billions of tobacco tax revenues assumed.
Government pretends to be in a moral meltdown over fraud by the tobacco industry.
The government's suit seeks recompense from tobacco companies for expenditures the government, because of the companies' fraud, incurred treating smoking related illnesses. The government knows something about tobacco-related fraud. Hundreds of jurisdictions have banned indoor smoking, partly because of a 1993 Environmental Protection Agency report that environmental tobacco smoke kills 3,000 Americans a year. EPA's fraud was minor compared to the government's pretense that smoking costs it money. But, then, one certainty is that accuracy is not the hallmark of the government's tobacco policy.