Fact check
Is it true: Tobacco Industry Cover-Up?
Yes — this is confirmed.
Confirmed by the companies' own documents and by a federal court. After a bench trial of about nine months, Judge Gladys Kessler found in 2006 that the major cigarette makers had violated civil RICO through a scheme to deceive the public about smoking and health, addiction, nicotine control, 'light' cigarettes and youth marketing; the D.C. Circuit affirmed the liability finding in large part in 2009. The court found the scheme proven in most, but not all, of the areas the government alleged, and the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement was a settlement without admission of liability, not a verdict.
The claim
The major US cigarette makers knew from their own research that smoking causes disease and that nicotine is addictive, agreed to deny both in public, and sustained that denial for decades while manipulating nicotine delivery and marketing to young people. The verdict judges that documented core, as found in United States v. Philip Morris USA (2006); it does not cover claims that all public-health science is captured or fraudulent, or that executives were proven to have committed perjury.
Key evidence
Brown & Williamson documents surface (1994)
Not all companies acted identically
Conspirafy steelmans each claim, then follows the evidence. How we reach a verdict · Check another claim