Thirty-five years after the Surgeon General's warning, in October 1999, the world's largest tobacco company, Philip Morris, acknowledged that tobacco smoking causes lung cancer, emphysema and heart disease, and that tobacco smoking is addictive. Philip Morris did it in the modern way, on the Internet. There is an overwhelming medical and scientific consensus that cigarette smoking causes lung cancer, heart disease, emphysema and other serious diseases in smokers.
Smokers are far more likely to develop serious diseases, like lung cancer, than non-smokers.
These are and have been the messages of public health authorities worldwide. Smokers and potential smokers should rely on these messages in making all smoking-related decisions. I think what we are trying to do is reach out and be open and accessible to people in every way possible. This does not mean that new class-action lawsuits can't be launched against the tobacco industry by individual smokers. An ongoing landmark case involves 500,000 Florida smokers in a class-action against the tobacco industry.