No business is more malignant, killing more than 4.5m people annually worldwide and causing immense pain and suffering to many millions of others. Of course not. Neither the US nor the UK has satisfactory legal machinery yet for making the industry pay for the injuries it inflicts. The company was found guilty on six counts of fraud, negligence and making a defective product. The punitive damage was based on the company's conduct, not its product - the deception, denials and lies with which it sought to obscure the cancers, heart disease and straightforward addiction that its product caused.
Individual suits are just one of three types of action the industry is facing.
The number of liability cases filed in the US alone numbered 4,740 last year. The most successful so far have been by state agencies, seeking compensation for the costs of treating ill workers. Class actions have failed in 28 states on the grounds of individual responsibility of smokers. An alert prime minister, eager to cleanse himself from the earlier Formula One tobacco advertising row, would recognise these faults and insist they were remedied.