Tobacco companies are to begin running TV and newspaper ads proclaiming their products are bad for you — really bad.
The new initiative is part of a settlement between big tobacco and the Justice Department, which found cigarette companies had violated racketeering laws and lied for decades about the dangers of smoking.
The Philadelphia Daily News reports one of the statements the ads must use is: "More people die every year from smoking than from murder, AIDS, suicide, drugs, car crashes, and alcohol combined."
Other pitches will read: "Secondhand smoke causes lung cancer and coronary heart disease in adults who do not smoke," and tobacco companies will admit they "intentionally designed cigarettes to make them more addictive."
Tobacco use is the leading cause of preventable death and disease in the United States, annually killing 480,000 people and costing $170 billion in healthcare expenses, the Daily News says.
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