Mind you, the officers of these tobacco companies have a responsibility to their shareholders to cut the best deal possible. If this deal promises protection from the uncertainties of much future litigation, they can hardly be blamed for trying. Firearm manufacturers have been targeted next. Not that any of these payments go directly to the real sufferers, of course. Instead, cementing the socialist dictum that government must wetnurse us from cradle to grave, all payments are made to the state.
Smoking is an unhealthy and dangerous habit.
Vin Suprynowicz is the assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Watch for Vin's book, Send in the Waco Killers , coming from Huntington Press in February 1999.