Choice, Responsibility, and Death by Cigarette

BBC: US chain smoker's widow gets $8m

A US jury has ordered tobacco giant Philip Morris to pay $8m (£5.6m) to the widow of a lifelong smoker who died of lung disease.

The jury in Florida decided in favour of Elaine Hess, whose husband Stuart died of lung cancer in 1997 at age 55. He had smoked for 40 years.


As much as I hate cigarettes and the people who produce them, I disagree with rulings of this nature. If you smoke yourself to death, it's your own fault.*

Information about the dangers of smoking are now so widely disseminated that only the most braindead (among them, not surprisingly, Rush Limbaugh) can doubt that smoking is one of the most unhealthy things you can do to your body.

No one forces you to start smoking. And once you're addicted, many methods of quitting are available, ranging from the chemical (nicotine patches) to the subconscious (hypnosis). Millions of people have gotten off cigarettes and stayed off them. It takes willpower to suffer through withdrawal, but that's the price you pay for getting hooked on something so manifestly stupid in the first place.

If smoking deaths can be blamed on the cigarette industry, then the same logic can be used to award lawsuits to obese people who, ignoring all personal accountability, blame the bloated state of their bodies on the fast food industry. Both industries use aggressive marketing, and cigarettes and junk food both have addictive properties, but if you choose to put crap into your body, you have only yourself to blame for the results.

So although I enjoy it when Phillip Morris or McDonald's loses money, I don't like that it's at the expense of properly assigning responsibility. If we blame obesity and lung cancer on unhealthful industries instead of the people who support those industries, we will view people as passive victims instead of active consumers who got exactly what they paid for.



*The subject of the lawsuit discussed here started smoking in the fifties, when cigarette companies still used flagrantly false advertising (4 out of 5 doctors prefer Camel!), and when no one appreciated the full extent of the damage tobacco wreaks on the body. So it should be noted that he and the others who started smoking back then may have a warranted complaint.