Getting to yes. If this were the whole dispute, it would be easy to solve. Big Tobacco could adopt most of the ad restrictions favored by the Food and Drug Administration. Both sides could settle on a proper sum to compensate sick smokers, families of dead smokers, and states that absorbed smokers' medical bills. But the official dispute is only part of the story.
Smoking is the leading cause of avoidable death in America.
Tobacco kills 400,000 people each year, a figure that exceeds the combined deaths from AIDS, car accidents, murders, and drugs. While most smokers got hooked when they were minors, that doesn't necessarily make tobacco addiction a pediatric disease, as the FDA asserts. Activists define the issue as childhood addiction because they know public policies aimed at changing adult behavior are condemned as paternalistic. And antismoking groups' desire to sue tobacco companies isn't based on the wish to make plaintiffs and their lawyers rich or to swell state budgets. Far more important is to prevent future generations from dying young because of tobacco-related disease.