Journal Article

Will the tobacco settlement payments go up in smoke?


Abstract: In December 1995, Massachusetts attorney general Scott Harshbarger filed a civil suit against the tobacco industry. The Commonwealths lawsuit charged that the tobacco industry had conducted research into the addictive properties of nicotine and used this research to willfully manipulate the nicotine level of cigarettes in order to addict smokers and increase cigarette sales. The lawsuit asked the court for damages to compensate the Commonwealth for expenditures paid to treat smoking-related illnesses. At the time this litigation was filed, Massachusetts was the fifth state in the nation to bring such a lawsuit, behind Mississippi, Florida, Minnesota, and West Virginia.

Keywords: Connecticut; Vermont; Maine; Massachusetts; New Hampshire; Rhode Island;

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File(s): File format is application/pdf http://www.bostonfed.org/economic/neff/neff24/neff24.pdf

Authors

Bibliographic Information

Provider: Federal Reserve Bank of Boston

Part of Series: Fiscal Facts

Publication Date: 2000

Issue: Spr

Pages: 1-5

Order Number: 24