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The Tobacco Master Settlement: That Time We Got Em · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
0:11
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
0:14
Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is stuff you
0:16
Speaker 2: should Know. I think part of our ongoing corporate mouthfeas.
0:20
Speaker 1: In this edition, Yeah for sure. And the beginning of
0:24
Speaker 1: this episode ties in a lot with we did an
0:27
Speaker 1: episode about the history of the cigarette, sure, like just
0:30
Speaker 1: the thing that you shouldn't put in your mouth, but
0:33
Speaker 1: people do, right, And so we're going to talk a
0:36
Speaker 1: little bit about that here at the beginning, because you
0:39
Speaker 1: need to know a little bit about that as it
0:42
Speaker 1: leads up to what were the you know this lawsuits
0:45
Speaker 1: against big Tobacco. And we should start by saying that
0:49
Speaker 1: it's been a long time that we've known that tobacco
0:53
Speaker 1: and smoking was really bad for you and would kill you.
0:56
Speaker 1: Like the nineteen twenties we knew for sure, the fifties
1:01
Speaker 1: we really really knew. And in the nineteen sixties is
1:06
Speaker 1: when John F. Kennedy finally came out via his Surgeon
1:09
Speaker 1: General Luther Terry, and said, all right, everybody, it's nineteen
1:13
Speaker 1: sixty four. I'm finally going to issue a government report
1:17
Speaker 1: based on you know about a dozen studies with lots
1:21
Speaker 1: of data about a million male smokers, and this stuff
1:25
Speaker 1: is really bad for you. So we're going to have
1:26
Speaker 1: to start putting warning labels on packages.
1:30
Speaker 2: Yeah. The great thing about those warning labels, though, is
1:34
Speaker 2: you were educated to imagine Sammy Davis Junior saying it
1:39
Speaker 2: in your head.
1:40
Speaker 3: That's right.
1:42
Speaker 2: So the cigarette companies this is the beginning of their playbook,
1:48
Speaker 2: and their playbook was basically, nah, yeah, prove it. You
1:52
Speaker 2: can't prove it. This is the whole idea of settled science,
1:56
Speaker 2: the idea that which is just a complete oxymoron, science
2:00
Speaker 2: has never settled. It's a constant, ongoing process. But the
2:03
Speaker 2: idea that you have to have one definitive proof before
2:07
Speaker 2: you can even begin talking about whether something is harmful
2:11
Speaker 2: or not, and really exploiting and manipulating the public through
2:16
Speaker 2: really horrible means, this is where that all started. And
2:19
Speaker 2: the first response that cigarette companies came up with was
2:22
Speaker 2: to say, all right, how about we put filters on cigarettes, Because,
2:26
Speaker 2: as everybody knows, cigarettes make your throat kind of scratchy.
2:30
Speaker 2: Sometimes they can make you hoarse, and that's okay, that's
2:33
Speaker 2: a part of smoking. These new filters are going to
2:36
Speaker 2: help with all of that, and there you go. Cigarettes
2:39
Speaker 2: are healthy everybody.
2:40
Speaker 1: That's right. In the sixties and seventies, that's when we
2:44
Speaker 1: saw lighter cigarettes or low tar cigarettes. In the fifties,
2:49
Speaker 1: they got really sort of organized and official about their
2:54
Speaker 1: PR campaigns. I guess they're propaganda campaigns. When they formed
2:58
Speaker 1: the Tobacco Industry Research Committee under the guise of studying
3:03
Speaker 1: the health hazards of smoking, but it was very much
3:06
Speaker 1: just a PR move. They put out an ad called
3:10
Speaker 1: a Frank Statement the cigarette smokers early on, which said like, hey,
3:14
Speaker 1: we're really like, your health is paramount to us as
3:18
Speaker 1: we sell you cigarettes. It's hard not to laugh because
3:20
Speaker 1: this is just so dumb to think about that people
3:23
Speaker 1: would have bought this.
3:24
Speaker 2: Yeah, but also just so cynical that they would need
3:27
Speaker 2: for sure this too, you know.
3:28
Speaker 1: But they said, all right, we're really going to pledge
3:30
Speaker 1: to research this everyone because we care about your health.
3:33
Speaker 1: But also again, like, you can't really prove that it's
3:36
Speaker 1: just a cigarettes, Like, how do you know that these
3:38
Speaker 1: people dying of lung cancer didn't also get it from
3:41
Speaker 1: all the other stuff that's going on in the world.
3:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, And actually that would become kind of codified in
3:49
Speaker 2: what's called the Roper proposal. There was a Tobacco Institute
3:53
Speaker 2: vice president, so in addition to the Tobacco Industry Research Committee,
3:57
Speaker 2: they also came up with the Tobacco and this Institute,
4:01
Speaker 2: and then they renamed the TRC the Council for Tobacco Research.
4:06
Speaker 2: No word of the industry in it, so it's even
4:08
Speaker 2: more trustworthy, right, And Fred Panzer was vice president of
4:13
Speaker 2: the Tobacco Institute, and he wrote a memo in nineteen
4:16
Speaker 2: seventy two that said, essentially, here's what we should do.
4:20
Speaker 2: We need to create doubt about the health charge without
4:23
Speaker 2: actually denying it. And essentially it's a variation on the
4:27
Speaker 2: theme that the case is not proved. And he said,
4:32
Speaker 2: kind of what you were saying that like these are
4:34
Speaker 2: like you can't really prove that it's cigarettes. So for example,
4:39
Speaker 2: extroverts are more likely to smoke cigarettes, but they're also
4:42
Speaker 2: more likely to get out in the world and drop out.
4:44
Speaker 3: Of a heart attack.
4:45
Speaker 2: So maybe it's just that extroverts smoke cigarettes, or that
4:49
Speaker 2: there was one called the constitutional hypothesis that was people
4:53
Speaker 2: who get sick from smoking are biologically predisposed to get
4:57
Speaker 2: sick in general, so it's really them. This was all
5:00
Speaker 2: just thrown about in nineteen seventy two to basically lie
5:04
Speaker 2: to the public and confuse the public about whether or
5:06
Speaker 2: not cigarettes were unhealthy or harmful.
5:09
Speaker 1: Yeah, so they're pushing this campaign out behind the scenes.
5:13
Speaker 1: They're just throwing in the back file drawer every study
5:17
Speaker 1: that they had that showed that nicotine was addictive, that
5:21
Speaker 1: smoking was bad for you, Like, they're suppressing that information
5:25
Speaker 1: as well as at the same time targeting children with,
5:30
Speaker 1: you know, product placement in movies, specifically Superman two in
5:34
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty one with Marlborough. Obviously we've talked about camel
5:38
Speaker 1: Joe before in the history of the cigarette. That was
5:42
Speaker 1: what I say, cammel Joe. Yeah, I like camel Joe. Okay,
5:46
Speaker 1: I think we should leave all this in there except
5:48
Speaker 1: the beep, although there's plenty of those episodes.
5:52
Speaker 3: Yeah, let's get the beep out.
5:54
Speaker 1: So that was in nineteen eighty eight. I like camel Joe.
5:59
Speaker 3: I like so called you.
6:01
Speaker 1: I always called them camel Joe. I didn't know that
6:03
Speaker 1: wasn't the name.
6:03
Speaker 2: I'm sure there's some retired tobacco industry guy who was like, man,
6:07
Speaker 2: we should have called him Camel Joe. That is way better.
6:11
Speaker 1: Here's a gen X stat for you, which is fairly
6:13
Speaker 1: staggering but completely believable. Youth smoking, like kids and teenager smoking,
6:19
Speaker 1: had been on the decline kind of through the seventies
6:22
Speaker 1: and eighties for the most part, and then in the
6:24
Speaker 1: nineties when gen X came around to like prime smoking age,
6:29
Speaker 1: it really jumped. It hit an all time high in
6:31
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety seven of thirty six point four percent of
6:35
Speaker 1: youth were smoking. Adults were smoking at twenty four point
6:40
Speaker 1: seven percent at the time, and that's just a staggering number.
6:44
Speaker 1: I think it's at like three point something percent now.
6:47
Speaker 1: So gen xers were smoking at a rate of thirty
6:49
Speaker 1: six percent.
6:50
Speaker 3: Yeah.
6:50
Speaker 2: And there's two things that they suggest had to do
6:53
Speaker 2: with that huge jump in youth smoking. One was this
6:58
Speaker 2: big campaign and push to target youth smokers. The tobacco
7:03
Speaker 2: industry called them replacement smokers. They would replace the other
7:08
Speaker 2: lifelong smokers that died off from smoking, right. And that's
7:12
Speaker 2: the thing too, is like one of the things about smoking,
7:14
Speaker 2: very few people start smoking as adults. We call them
7:18
Speaker 2: total morons. Most people who smoke started smoking in adolescents.
7:23
Speaker 2: So the tobacco industry had every incentive to go after kids.
7:27
Speaker 2: They just knew that society would not allow them to
7:30
Speaker 2: do that if they did it overtly, so they had
7:32
Speaker 2: to do it, you know, kind of under the radar
7:34
Speaker 2: with Camel Joe. The other thing is that there was
7:38
Speaker 2: a price war that started in the mid nineties, and
7:42
Speaker 2: that they think that the drop in the price of cigarettes, Yeah,
7:48
Speaker 2: made it more likely for younger kids to smoke, because
7:51
Speaker 2: younger kids are more price sensitive than older people who
7:54
Speaker 2: are smokers.
7:55
Speaker 1: Remember how cheap cigarettes were back then. Yeah, it's like
7:58
Speaker 1: a buck buck twenty five a pack or something for sure. Yeah.
8:02
Speaker 1: I mean I wasn't a regular smoker. I occasionally smoked,
8:06
Speaker 1: as we talked about before, So I wasn't like buying packs,
8:09
Speaker 1: but I sold them at the Golden Pantry in Athens,
8:12
Speaker 1: Georgia on the East Side. And cigarettes were cheap, and
8:15
Speaker 1: they're somebody told me the day that they were like
8:18
Speaker 1: twelve to fifteen dollars in like twenty something bucks in
8:21
Speaker 1: New York a pack.
8:22
Speaker 2: I believe that. I totally believe that.
8:24
Speaker 1: Oly. Well, we'll see why here in a minute.
8:28
Speaker 2: So yeah, one of the other things too, that they're
8:30
Speaker 2: doing at the same time, besides suppressing studies sewing doubt
8:35
Speaker 2: and confusion among the public about the harm of cigarettes,
8:38
Speaker 2: they're just out and out denying publicly that not only
8:42
Speaker 2: your cigarettes not harmful, they're not even addictive. That as
8:45
Speaker 2: recently as nineteen ninety four, Yeah, they were publicly saying,
8:50
Speaker 2: like the head of Philip Morris was saying in interviews,
8:53
Speaker 2: we do not believe cigarettes are addictive. In the nineties,
8:56
Speaker 2: people had known, like all you had to do is
8:58
Speaker 2: ask a smoker back in fifties if they were addicted
9:01
Speaker 2: to cigarettes, and they could tell you that they probably were.
9:04
Speaker 2: And like this, the industry in the nineties still wouldn't
9:08
Speaker 2: fess up to that. Like that was their tactic. Just
9:12
Speaker 2: a complete solid wall with zero cracks in it, over
9:16
Speaker 2: and over again being reinforced publicly.
9:19
Speaker 1: Yeah. Actually, in the nineteen fifties, I think they probably said, like, no,
9:22
Speaker 1: I don't think they're addicted, but do you have a cigarette?
9:23
Speaker 1: Can I have a cigarette?
9:25
Speaker 3: Right?
9:25
Speaker 1: I see a guy where they're smoking, you think he
9:26
Speaker 1: has an extra cigarette for me?
9:28
Speaker 3: Right?
9:29
Speaker 1: All right? So in the nineteen fifties, we need to
9:32
Speaker 1: start with sort of lawsuit talk. There were a lot
9:35
Speaker 1: of lawsuits all unsuccessful. By the mid nineties, when they
9:40
Speaker 1: were still saying that it wasn't addictive, there were at
9:43
Speaker 1: least four hundred lawsuits that they never lost, they never settled.
9:48
Speaker 1: They had one hundred percent record.
9:49
Speaker 3: That's crazy, which is.
9:51
Speaker 1: Staggering to learn. They had obviously a ton of money
9:55
Speaker 1: to form like the best legal representation they could, but
9:58
Speaker 1: they were also actively low being state governments about making
10:03
Speaker 1: it harder to sue about tort reform because like, hey,
10:05
Speaker 1: tobacco's a natural product, so cigarettes fall into that category,
10:11
Speaker 1: like despite all the other stuff that's in there, so
10:13
Speaker 1: you can't sue somebody for packaging a natural thing and
10:16
Speaker 1: selling it to people.
10:18
Speaker 3: Yeah.
10:18
Speaker 2: That was the other thing they were doing, too, is
10:20
Speaker 2: they were really lobbying government really effectively.
10:25
Speaker 3: Like they spent a lot of money on.
10:26
Speaker 1: Lobbyists, right, not like now.
10:29
Speaker 2: So yeah, they were like the teflon down of industries.
10:33
Speaker 3: I guess, yeah, tobacco industry.
10:35
Speaker 2: Was what did you just say, not like now, because
10:39
Speaker 2: I picked up like atastic, Yeah, what were you mentioning?
10:45
Speaker 1: I'm sure they're still pouring tons of money into the lobby.
10:48
Speaker 2: Oh sure, sure, yeah, I'm sure too. But so they
10:52
Speaker 2: were they were just completely untouchable, Like, I mean, if
10:57
Speaker 2: you have one hundred percent record, that in and of
10:59
Speaker 2: it self will prevent people from filing suit against you.
11:03
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, because it's expensive, it is, right.
11:05
Speaker 2: And you're just like, I'm not gonna win, or the
11:07
Speaker 2: chances of me winning are so low, I might not
11:10
Speaker 2: even file suit. So the state also, we should mention
11:14
Speaker 2: Congress is doing almost nothing about this at this point.
11:18
Speaker 2: So the state attorneys general, William Safire just smiled from heaven.
11:25
Speaker 2: Led by a guy named Michael Moore, he was the
11:28
Speaker 2: attorney general from Mississippi. They got together and they said, well,
11:32
Speaker 2: if the federal government's I can't do anything about it,
11:35
Speaker 2: we're going to Yeah, and one state might not be
11:38
Speaker 2: able to take on the tobacco industry, but every state,
11:42
Speaker 2: territory and DC together definitely can take on the tobacco industry.
11:47
Speaker 2: Not only can we take them on, we can seriously
11:50
Speaker 2: threaten to bankrupt the entire tobacco industry right out of
11:55
Speaker 2: existence if we really try.
11:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they play their cards right, because they were like,
12:00
Speaker 1: how can we best go at them? Maybe medicaid is
12:04
Speaker 1: the way to do it, because we have these medicaid
12:06
Speaker 1: programs through our individual states that are not going bankrupt,
12:11
Speaker 1: but they're they're in bad shape in a lot of
12:14
Speaker 1: cases because they're treating all these smokers who are really
12:17
Speaker 1: expensive to get through, like you know, lung cancer treatment,
12:21
Speaker 1: and they have deceived us for all these years. So
12:24
Speaker 1: let's go after him for RICO status like fraud and racketeering.
12:29
Speaker 1: And that'll send a shiver even through the spine of
12:33
Speaker 1: a teflon don. And they were turning up, like Livia says,
12:38
Speaker 1: like literal truckloads of documents from the industry about them
12:43
Speaker 1: selling to teenagers, bearing studies covering up what they knew
12:47
Speaker 1: about how addictive everything was. And there were I mean,
12:50
Speaker 1: this would be a good sort of thriller movie, almost
12:54
Speaker 1: like a Soderberg kind of thing. You probably do a
12:56
Speaker 1: great job with it. Where like they're racing like documents
13:00
Speaker 1: out of offices while they're trying to actively like bury
13:04
Speaker 1: these documents, Like I think the guy from Texas was
13:08
Speaker 1: literally trying to put papers on a private jet so
13:11
Speaker 1: they could be taken to a district judge before the
13:14
Speaker 1: state court could seal them up because once the Feds
13:17
Speaker 1: are investigating, it can't be sealed at the state.
13:19
Speaker 2: Level, right or even if they do steal it at
13:22
Speaker 2: the state level. This federal district judge is like, that
13:24
Speaker 2: doesn't apply to me, so I can I can make
13:26
Speaker 2: these public are part of a court case, right, So yeah,
13:29
Speaker 2: I mean yeah, that is like a thriller. And there
13:31
Speaker 2: is something that kind of touched on this. It was
13:33
Speaker 2: the Insider with who is the Australian actor he used
13:38
Speaker 2: to get in fights all the time?
13:40
Speaker 1: Russell Crowe?
13:41
Speaker 2: Yeah, Russell Crowe is Jeffrey Wiggand I think yeah, who
13:44
Speaker 2: was like this whistleblower a movie back on Industry?
13:46
Speaker 3: It was great.
13:47
Speaker 2: I think that was a Michael Man movie.
13:50
Speaker 1: Michael Mann, Man, I nailed it. You should nailing all
13:54
Speaker 1: of it.
13:55
Speaker 2: I should be a guest on movie Crush.
13:57
Speaker 1: Oh man, if only.
13:59
Speaker 2: But one of the other things you kind of touched
14:01
Speaker 2: on their strategy, like the focusing on lying to the
14:07
Speaker 2: public and targeting teens. That was a really smart strategy
14:10
Speaker 2: because if they were just like cigarettes are harmful and
14:13
Speaker 2: we need to get rid of them, a lot of
14:15
Speaker 2: adults are like, you don't need to tell me whether
14:17
Speaker 2: I should smoke or not. I can kill myself if
14:19
Speaker 2: I want to. So they left that part alone and
14:22
Speaker 2: they went after the fact that they were targeting teens
14:25
Speaker 2: and lying to the public, because the public sentiment can
14:28
Speaker 2: get behind those two things like yeah, kids are out
14:30
Speaker 2: of bounds, we don't want them smoking, and you know
14:34
Speaker 2: we were lied to all these years by these same people. Yeah,
14:37
Speaker 2: go get them. So that was a really smart strategy
14:40
Speaker 2: that these attorneys general like took on, like it was amazing,
14:44
Speaker 2: an amazing court angle, I think is what they call them,
14:50
Speaker 2: what a court angle?
14:51
Speaker 1: Look at that, Yeah, for sure. And the writing was
14:55
Speaker 1: on the wall for investors because we're talking about hundreds
14:57
Speaker 1: of billions of dollars at stake, and they were like, hey,
15:02
Speaker 1: this is this is going to look really bad and
15:03
Speaker 1: our stock prices are going to really go in the tank.
15:06
Speaker 1: And so you got to cut a deal here, which
15:09
Speaker 1: the tobacco company never had thought about, you know, because
15:12
Speaker 1: they had not only lost, never lost, they never settled anything.
15:16
Speaker 1: So finally in April of ninety seven, they were set
15:19
Speaker 1: to go to trial in a few months and they're like,
15:21
Speaker 1: all right, let's get a meeting set up with this
15:23
Speaker 1: Michael Moore character from Mississippi, not the movie guy obviously,
15:27
Speaker 1: and an attorney for Tobacco Free Kids who was working
15:31
Speaker 1: with the States about all the marketing toward you know,
15:34
Speaker 1: kids with Joe, Cammel Joe and everybody. So they started negotiating, like,
15:38
Speaker 1: all right, out of the gate, let's just say we'll
15:40
Speaker 1: get rid of Camel Joe. We love him, kids love him,
15:44
Speaker 1: but we'll get rid of him and the marble or
15:46
Speaker 1: man if that makes you happy. And then a few
15:48
Speaker 1: months later in June, they said, all right, we got
15:52
Speaker 1: to start talking, like hash out the money part. So
15:56
Speaker 1: how does three hundred and sixty eight and a half
15:58
Speaker 1: billion dollars sound over twenty five years as just an
16:02
Speaker 1: opening salvo?
16:04
Speaker 2: Yeah, And the States were like, I was not expecting
16:07
Speaker 2: that actually, but they so they were like, okay, here's
16:10
Speaker 2: the problem though, These are like we need to bring
16:12
Speaker 2: the Feds in, like that Congress has to approve of
16:16
Speaker 2: this deal the way that we've set it up. And
16:18
Speaker 2: there were some federal aspects to it. One was that
16:21
Speaker 2: the FDA would start regulating tobacco products. Another one was
16:26
Speaker 2: that the companies, these tobacco companies would be protected against
16:31
Speaker 2: any further civil and class action lawsuits.
16:35
Speaker 1: This is the big one.
16:36
Speaker 3: Yeah, Yeah.
16:36
Speaker 2: In exchange, they would create a fund to pay some
16:39
Speaker 2: of those people off, and then there would also be
16:41
Speaker 2: federal restrictions on indoor smoking. And this did not go
16:46
Speaker 2: very far because of that protection of the companies.
16:49
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, I mean that was the sticking point. I
16:53
Speaker 1: think they could have not too happily lived with the
16:55
Speaker 1: rest of it, but that was a big one as
16:59
Speaker 1: far as Congress, and soon enough the American people were like,
17:03
Speaker 1: uh uh, we can't have that. No, So Congress had
17:06
Speaker 1: a build to ratify or at least considering a bill
17:08
Speaker 1: to ratify it, Universal Tobacco Settlement Act S fourteen fourteen.
17:14
Speaker 1: They were debating it, all this disclosure comes out and
17:17
Speaker 1: they're like, man, they were really awful companies and it's
17:21
Speaker 1: worse than we thought even and the idea of them
17:24
Speaker 1: being protected moving forward, like is it going to fly?
17:27
Speaker 1: So the late Senator John McCain said, all right, how
17:31
Speaker 1: about S fourteen fifteen where there's more money, like had
17:35
Speaker 1: this five hundred and twenty billion sound and we're not
17:38
Speaker 1: going to protect you from now on like you you
17:40
Speaker 1: can be sued moving forward too.
17:43
Speaker 3: Yeah.
17:43
Speaker 2: The industry lobbied like they've never lobbied before to keep
17:47
Speaker 2: this from getting passed through. And again you mentioned the
17:50
Speaker 2: stock prices when all these stuff, the stuff is going on,
17:53
Speaker 2: their stocks are tanking. When you know there would be
17:56
Speaker 2: a win for in the negotiations for the tobacco companies,
17:59
Speaker 2: their stock prices would go back up. It's all very cynical.
18:03
Speaker 2: And this stock price went back up after McCain's bill
18:07
Speaker 2: did not get passed. And one of the reasons it
18:10
Speaker 2: wasn't passed is because other senators added like riders that
18:15
Speaker 2: had nothing to do with tobacco, and I'm guessing unpopular writers,
18:18
Speaker 2: probably at the behest of the tobacco companies. I could
18:21
Speaker 2: not find the writers to save my life, to basically
18:25
Speaker 2: sink this bill. You know, like, imagine if you had
18:28
Speaker 2: this great bill and then somebody's like, I'm also adding
18:32
Speaker 2: a rider to repeal the requirement for child sexual predators
18:38
Speaker 2: from having to register and they can live by schools. Now,
18:41
Speaker 2: your bill's not going to pass. And I get the
18:43
Speaker 2: impression that that's kind of what happened to McCain's bill.
18:47
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, there was another thing we just sort
18:51
Speaker 1: of should mention in passing at least, so it was
18:52
Speaker 1: another suit in October of ninety seven. This is why
18:55
Speaker 1: they're debating these original bills in Congress where they did settle.
19:00
Speaker 1: It was a separate class action suit that was filed
19:03
Speaker 1: ninety one by flight attendants in the United States saying like, hey,
19:07
Speaker 1: smoking sections and planes are like killing us and it's
19:11
Speaker 1: pretty awful. So it was a husband and wife team
19:13
Speaker 1: named Stanley and Susan Rosenblatt who filed this one, and
19:17
Speaker 1: they ended up settling for three hundred million dollars to
19:20
Speaker 1: fund medical research. And they said this was a big
19:25
Speaker 1: sort of turning point, and that's the first time they
19:27
Speaker 1: officially caved. And again this is while they're debating these
19:31
Speaker 1: bills in the Congress.
19:32
Speaker 2: Right, Chuck, I feel like we set things up pretty
19:36
Speaker 2: well for a break, Like we deserve an.
19:38
Speaker 1: Ad we deserve a break today.
19:42
Speaker 4: Let's do it, okay, Okay.
20:06
Speaker 2: So things are just kind of not going quite well
20:10
Speaker 2: because the whole thing was handed over from the states
20:13
Speaker 2: to Congress, and Congress just fumbled it.
20:16
Speaker 3: As they do.
20:18
Speaker 2: So some of the states went on and we're like,
20:20
Speaker 2: we're gonna just keep going and negotiating our own agreements
20:25
Speaker 2: with the tobacco companies Florida, Minnesota, Mississippi, who had led
20:30
Speaker 2: the charge originally in the first place, and Texas. They
20:34
Speaker 2: all came up with their own settlements and like pretty
20:38
Speaker 2: eye popping amounts, Texas got more than seventeen and a
20:42
Speaker 2: half billion dollars out of their agreement. Minnesota got a
20:46
Speaker 2: nice chunk of change. But they also had the foresight
20:50
Speaker 2: to say, not only are you going to settle with money,
20:54
Speaker 2: part of this is that you have to disclose public records.
20:58
Speaker 2: All internal documents that are part of discovery in this
21:02
Speaker 2: process are going to be made public after this, and
21:06
Speaker 2: the tobacco companies had to agree with that. So that
21:09
Speaker 2: was where a lot of these disclosures came from. That
21:11
Speaker 2: they had just been lying, lying, lying, because these troves
21:15
Speaker 2: of documents that came up in discovery during these cases,
21:20
Speaker 2: just journalists went crazy. It was like a feeding frenzy
21:24
Speaker 2: on them.
21:25
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, for sure. They saw the writing on the
21:28
Speaker 1: wall once again. So they got together with the other
21:32
Speaker 1: remaining states who were all plaintiffs at this point in
21:36
Speaker 1: November of nineteen ninety eight and agreed to what would
21:40
Speaker 1: end up being the Tabasco Tabasco, the Tobacco Oh man,
21:45
Speaker 1: the Tabasco Settlement. Can you imagine the numbers? The Tobacco
21:49
Speaker 1: Master Settlement Agreement, the MSA, which would include two hundred
21:53
Speaker 1: and six billion dollars paid out over twenty five years
21:57
Speaker 1: to forty six states, five territories in DC. Yeah, and
22:01
Speaker 1: they would allocate it according to like how many smokers
22:04
Speaker 1: they estimated each state had and how much It was
22:06
Speaker 1: still based on the medicaid thing, so how much they had,
22:09
Speaker 1: you know, had to pay out and Medicaid for all
22:12
Speaker 1: these related costs. They said, Well, also stop targeting miners,
22:16
Speaker 1: even though they really like to smoke, as it turns out,
22:19
Speaker 1: and they love cartoon camels, So no more cartoon characters
22:23
Speaker 1: and our ads. We're not going to give away free
22:26
Speaker 1: cigarettes to miners at recess, which is crazy. We are
22:32
Speaker 1: going to shut down these you know, sort of shell
22:36
Speaker 1: research companies that are really just PR firms for US,
22:41
Speaker 1: dissolving those We're going to release all these documents, and
22:44
Speaker 1: we're going to create a national foundation to address underage
22:47
Speaker 1: tobacco use and addiction. And we promised to care this time.
22:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're a newer, gentler loving tobacco company.
22:56
Speaker 1: That's right.
22:57
Speaker 2: They also created what's now known as the Truth Initiative,
23:00
Speaker 2: which is this whole teen anti smoking campaign that was
23:05
Speaker 2: funded originally by the tobacco companies.
23:07
Speaker 1: Those commercials were great.
23:09
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're still around. The Truth Initiative is they seem
23:11
Speaker 2: to have migrated online.
23:13
Speaker 1: Surprisingly, Yeah, I'm sure.
23:14
Speaker 2: I mean, I guess that's where kids are these days
23:16
Speaker 2: or something.
23:17
Speaker 1: That's where the kids are.
23:18
Speaker 2: And so initially this agreement was just before or between
23:22
Speaker 2: these forty six states and territories in DC and the
23:26
Speaker 2: four largest tobacco companies which represented the vast majority of
23:31
Speaker 2: the market share of the tobacco industry in the United States,
23:34
Speaker 2: Philip Morris, R. J. Reynolds, Brown and Williamson and Laurellard.
23:39
Speaker 1: I'd only heard of two of those.
23:41
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, I've heard of the other ones, but
23:44
Speaker 2: I cannot tell you what they make.
23:46
Speaker 1: Okay, Yeah, no idea, let's just leave it at that.
23:49
Speaker 1: Maybe they make a Bucks I remember, Yeah, I remember.
23:52
Speaker 1: I think we talked about Bucks in the cigarettes episodes
23:55
Speaker 1: were at the Golden Pantry. Those were the Those are
23:58
Speaker 1: the ones that I think the rumor was, at least
24:00
Speaker 1: they were just made from the sweepings, the trimmings and
24:03
Speaker 1: sweepings up of factories. They would just package them as Bucks.
24:06
Speaker 2: I'm quite sure that that is true to some degree.
24:09
Speaker 2: There's a kernel of truth in there, and there's probably
24:12
Speaker 2: kernels of something in those buck.
24:13
Speaker 3: Cigarettes just about to say that.
24:17
Speaker 2: So a bunch of manufacturers were like, we don't need
24:20
Speaker 2: to take part in this. We didn't do that much damage.
24:22
Speaker 2: They're called non participating manufacturers. They were typically smaller players.
24:27
Speaker 2: I mean, if you weren't one of the big four,
24:28
Speaker 2: you were basically by definition, one of the smaller players.
24:32
Speaker 2: But the States are like, not so fast. You still
24:35
Speaker 2: are going to have to pay money to us for
24:38
Speaker 2: each cigarette that you sell. And those smaller players, most
24:42
Speaker 2: of them were like, well, maybe we'll sign this master
24:45
Speaker 2: settlement after all the mask So they really lasted, like
24:48
Speaker 2: a lot of tobacco manufacturers into this, this whole agreement.
24:53
Speaker 1: Yeah, if you're wondering about DIP, they had a different agreement,
24:57
Speaker 1: but it was still an agreement kind of under the
25:00
Speaker 1: spanner with US Tobacco Company, which makes Skull and Copenhagen.
25:05
Speaker 1: Did you ever dip at all?
25:07
Speaker 3: Yes? I did.
25:08
Speaker 2: One thing I never really did was chew. That was
25:12
Speaker 2: I tried it once and turned as green as you
25:14
Speaker 2: can get.
25:15
Speaker 1: Yeah, I chewed tobacco early on. We might have spoken
25:18
Speaker 1: about this when I was a youth group member at
25:21
Speaker 1: my church. It was pretty popular. So I chewed like
25:24
Speaker 1: Redman and Levi Garrett occasionally and then here and there.
25:28
Speaker 1: In college, I would dip with friends who dipped, but
25:31
Speaker 1: it never, like all nicotine never got its hooks and
25:34
Speaker 1: me thankfully.
25:34
Speaker 2: Oh that is thankful, for sure, because once it does,
25:37
Speaker 2: it's hard to get rid of.
25:39
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. But one difference with the dip companies
25:42
Speaker 1: is they were given out and I remember this is
25:44
Speaker 1: a big deal. They used to just give out reams
25:47
Speaker 1: of dip to minor league baseball and major league baseball.
25:52
Speaker 1: That's why baseball was and other sports too, but baseball
25:55
Speaker 1: was always associated with dipping. But they were like, you
25:57
Speaker 1: can't give this stuff away to like high school and
26:00
Speaker 1: college baseball teams anymore. In minor league baseball teams.
26:03
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think any sports team because like kids look
26:05
Speaker 2: up to them, right, which is a big part of
26:07
Speaker 2: why they were doing this. So the sunflower seed companies.
26:11
Speaker 1: Rejoiced, oh for sure.
26:14
Speaker 3: So there was.
26:15
Speaker 2: Another thing that came up that was fairly unpopular. But
26:19
Speaker 2: also I think people were just kind of what's not ambivalent,
26:24
Speaker 2: but where you're of two minds and you're kind of
26:26
Speaker 2: tussling over it internally, Yeah, the internal tussley we'll call it.
26:32
Speaker 2: Five point one five billion dollars went to the National
26:37
Speaker 2: Tobacco Growers Settlement Trust Fund to compensate tobacco farmers because
26:43
Speaker 2: they were going to sell a lot less tobacco.
26:48
Speaker 3: Because of this.
26:49
Speaker 1: And it's interesting to think about.
26:51
Speaker 2: Yeah, because you're like, on the one hand, like, who cares,
26:53
Speaker 2: it's tobacco, and then on the other hand, you're like,
26:55
Speaker 2: these are often family farmers who have been doing this
26:58
Speaker 2: for generation. So I kind of to yeah, I'm tussling
27:01
Speaker 2: internally over it.
27:03
Speaker 1: What word is it? I know what you're talking about. Yeah,
27:09
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't know somewhere right.
27:10
Speaker 2: In And then one other thing about this too that
27:13
Speaker 2: was part of the provision was people were like, well,
27:15
Speaker 2: what about the federal government because Medicaid is this joint
27:18
Speaker 2: state federal partnership and the feds fund a lot of this,
27:22
Speaker 2: And the Feds were like, no, we're leaving ourselves out.
27:24
Speaker 2: We're waiving any right to any of that money. This
27:26
Speaker 2: was the state's game, and they did a great job
27:28
Speaker 2: with it.
27:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, a lot of public health officials were like not
27:34
Speaker 1: super happy about that because they were like, hey, listen,
27:37
Speaker 1: unless we have the Feds overseeing this, How do we
27:41
Speaker 1: know what the states are going to use this money for?
27:44
Speaker 1: And you know, not to tease too aggressively, but I
27:48
Speaker 1: think we'll see an Act three that that was very
27:50
Speaker 1: much a valid concern.
27:51
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. The Feds did come after them though
27:55
Speaker 2: they I think this was they were secretly going to
27:59
Speaker 2: do this, and they're like, no, no, We're just going
28:01
Speaker 2: to leave it to the states. And the tobacco companies
28:03
Speaker 2: are like, whoa, and the Feds are like, we have
28:05
Speaker 2: our own thing we're about to do. There was us
28:08
Speaker 2: versus Philip Morris at all, and they saw billions and
28:13
Speaker 2: billions of dollars in compensation for healthcare money that they
28:17
Speaker 2: had spent out I guess basically what they had shelled
28:20
Speaker 2: out as part of the Medicaid program. They also went
28:23
Speaker 2: after them for RICO as racketeers and as being if
28:29
Speaker 2: you're convicted of racketeering as an organization and you're allowed
28:33
Speaker 2: to continue on as an organization, the Feds can basically
28:36
Speaker 2: garnish your profits for a very long time, or they
28:39
Speaker 2: can go back and seek previous profits, and they did.
28:43
Speaker 2: They looked for they wanted a portion of the company's
28:46
Speaker 2: profits from the past forty five years in this case
28:49
Speaker 2: that was launched in nineteen ninety nine.
28:53
Speaker 1: Yeah, and in the meantime, Phil Morris was like, hey
28:58
Speaker 1: Phil Morris at all, thanks a lot, Like why why
29:02
Speaker 1: has it always got to be us? They're like, you
29:06
Speaker 1: got a great name, Phil. So the companies did not
29:10
Speaker 1: settle this time. They're like, all right, we're getting bled
29:12
Speaker 1: dry by the States. Now the Feds are coming after us.
29:15
Speaker 1: So we were going to actually fight this thing, and
29:17
Speaker 1: they lost. In two thousand and six, the District judge
29:20
Speaker 1: for the United States a rule for the DOJ said no,
29:24
Speaker 1: you guys are racketeers. I'm going to greatly reduce that
29:28
Speaker 1: financial penalty down to million I'm sorry, ten billion dollars, yeah,
29:32
Speaker 1: from the hundreds they were asking for. But you know what,
29:35
Speaker 1: you got to admit to fraud. You have to issue
29:37
Speaker 1: what are called corrective statements. And we got to see
29:41
Speaker 1: all those documents because we know there are still more
29:43
Speaker 1: documents in your coffers.
29:45
Speaker 3: Yeah.
29:46
Speaker 2: I think there's something like fourteen million documents that were
29:49
Speaker 2: eventually released internal documents.
29:52
Speaker 1: Yeah.
29:53
Speaker 2: And then finally, remember back as part of like that
29:56
Speaker 2: first settlement agreement.
29:58
Speaker 3: That they tried to kick to the FED to ratify that.
30:01
Speaker 2: Part of it was having the fdah, yeah, start regulating tobacco.
30:06
Speaker 3: That was in nineteen ninety eight.
30:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, in two thousand and nine, the federal government finally
30:11
Speaker 2: got around to having the FDA regulate the tobacco industry.
30:16
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, let's take our second break, and we'll
30:18
Speaker 1: come back and talk about what this all meant and
30:21
Speaker 1: means right after this, all right, we promise talk of
30:47
Speaker 1: what it all meant and means. And it kind of
30:49
Speaker 1: depends on who you ask or when you ask as well,
30:53
Speaker 1: because when it happened and Act, the Effective National Action
30:58
Speaker 1: to Control Tobacco Group said you know what, and I
31:03
Speaker 1: think other people too, like the American Cancer Society, the
31:05
Speaker 1: American Psychological Association, they all got together and said, you
31:08
Speaker 1: know what, this isn't so great, Like that McCain bill
31:11
Speaker 1: really had teeth and that didn't pass, and we really
31:14
Speaker 1: wanted it to. So this is sort of a win
31:17
Speaker 1: for the cigarette companies. It had a lot of like
31:21
Speaker 1: obvious immediate impacts. And you know, I talked about, you
31:24
Speaker 1: know why cigarettes are so expensive, now this is partially
31:27
Speaker 1: why because they're what's not going to happen is the
31:30
Speaker 1: investors aren't going to lose any money, so they're going
31:33
Speaker 1: to say, like, well, just start jacking up cigarette costs,
31:36
Speaker 1: and a lot less people are smoking, so let's jack
31:39
Speaker 1: them up even more because we're not going to take
31:41
Speaker 1: a loss on this.
31:41
Speaker 3: Yeah, what are they gonna do? Quit?
31:43
Speaker 1: Yeah, So that started almost immediately. As far as price hiking,
31:48
Speaker 1: like forty five to fifty cents a pack right out
31:51
Speaker 1: of the gate was just the tip of the iceberg.
31:54
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, did you say twenty dollars a pack?
31:57
Speaker 2: I believe it, but that's still ipop.
32:00
Speaker 1: I think a smoker told me they were like twenty
32:03
Speaker 1: bucks in New York, but I haven't verified that.
32:07
Speaker 2: So one of the things that really happened that people
32:11
Speaker 2: point to the MSA as being directly responsible for is that,
32:16
Speaker 2: like the youth smoking just dropped precipitously.
32:21
Speaker 1: Yeah.
32:21
Speaker 2: Once they removed the ability for tobacco companies to market
32:25
Speaker 2: directly to kids and they simultaneously had anti smoking campaigns
32:30
Speaker 2: targeted towards kids.
32:31
Speaker 3: Like it really had an effect.
32:33
Speaker 2: Like you said, went from like thirty four percent to
32:36
Speaker 2: three point eight percent in twenty twenty one. I think
32:38
Speaker 2: it's even lower than that.
32:39
Speaker 3: Now.
32:40
Speaker 2: The problem is we didn't learn anything that or we
32:45
Speaker 2: didn't leave it open enough to apply to future kinds
32:48
Speaker 2: of tobacco that hadn't been around. So companies like Jewel
32:52
Speaker 2: and other e cigarette and vape companies they don't face
32:58
Speaker 2: these same regulations and basically marketed kids. They can use
33:01
Speaker 2: celebrity endorsers, and they do, but they still get sued
33:06
Speaker 2: a lot. I think Jewel paid out four hundred and
33:08
Speaker 2: sixty two million to six different states in twenty twenty three,
33:13
Speaker 2: So it's still going on. But that's been a huge
33:17
Speaker 2: dent in the incredible success of the curbing teen smoking.
33:24
Speaker 2: It's gone back up if you include vaping and hookahs
33:27
Speaker 2: and stuff like that. But I have also the impression
33:30
Speaker 2: that kids are a little smarter than we were at
33:34
Speaker 2: that age. Yeah, and they are seeing through a lot
33:37
Speaker 2: of this and it's not working quite as well as
33:39
Speaker 2: it did on us in the nineties.
33:42
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, more parental oversight and just there's
33:45
Speaker 1: a lot of factors for sure. On the egs. I
33:49
Speaker 1: think their day has come a little bit, but I
33:51
Speaker 1: think that it's really there and for some bad stuff
33:55
Speaker 1: moving forward because of just all the all the stuff
33:59
Speaker 1: that goes into that juice you know.
34:01
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, we took a pretty solid stand or position
34:06
Speaker 2: on vaping. I think we were if I remember correctly,
34:08
Speaker 2: we were opposed to it in our episode on vaping.
34:13
Speaker 1: That's right. The other thing that the settlements led to
34:16
Speaker 1: was just a turning of the tide, not just with
34:19
Speaker 1: kids smoking, but smoking in general, which was what they
34:21
Speaker 1: were after, was like, let's just try and get smoking
34:24
Speaker 1: way down overall, and individual states started enacting bands. I
34:29
Speaker 1: think in ninety eight, Utah and California were the first
34:32
Speaker 1: and only ones to say, like, hey, you can't smoke
34:35
Speaker 1: in restaurants anymore, you can't smoke in public places. Second
34:38
Speaker 1: hand smoke is a real thing, and most states had
34:41
Speaker 1: these bands in place now and people just generally look
34:46
Speaker 1: at smoking differently, like, you know, when someone lights up
34:49
Speaker 1: in public, I guess unless you're in Philadelphia, there are
34:52
Speaker 1: a lot of people now that will look sort of like,
34:55
Speaker 1: what are you doing dude?
34:56
Speaker 3: Yeah?
34:56
Speaker 2: Like who still does that exactly? Or when you a
35:00
Speaker 2: cigarette filter out the window when you're done with it.
35:03
Speaker 1: JESU, so sorry, I just went to a dark place.
35:08
Speaker 3: Now, I'm with you, I understand.
35:09
Speaker 1: So upsetting, Yeah, especially when one flicks off your windshield
35:12
Speaker 1: and you see a spark bounce.
35:13
Speaker 3: Well that's kind of.
35:16
Speaker 1: Well, just briefly, Yes.
35:18
Speaker 2: So there was a lot of a lot of success
35:22
Speaker 2: directly from the Master Settlement Agreement. Let's talk about the
35:26
Speaker 2: problems with the Master Settlement Agreement, because a lot of
35:28
Speaker 2: people are like, this could have been done better, we
35:30
Speaker 2: should have done the McCain bill right. And then really importantly,
35:35
Speaker 2: there were only a couple of states that had the
35:37
Speaker 2: foresight to designate the payments from the Master Settlement Agreement
35:44
Speaker 2: from the tobacco companies that are made annually in perpetuity.
35:48
Speaker 2: I hadn't realized this. There's no end date to these
35:51
Speaker 2: payments as far as I know, which I don't fully
35:56
Speaker 2: understand because I think they settled on like an actual number, right,
36:00
Speaker 2: So that doesn't quite make sense to me. But I've
36:02
Speaker 2: seen in multiple places that these are imperpetuity payments.
36:06
Speaker 1: Yeah. The only thing I can figure out there is
36:08
Speaker 1: they're like, hey, you're still selling cigarettes and this is
36:11
Speaker 1: still a problem for medicaid. So it's not like that's
36:14
Speaker 1: ever going to stop. That's the only thing I can
36:15
Speaker 1: figure out.
36:16
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've got that. I get that too.
36:17
Speaker 2: I think that that's probably it that's the best argument
36:20
Speaker 2: for it. But then does that mean that their ultimate
36:22
Speaker 2: payouts are going to exceed that the hundreds of billions
36:27
Speaker 2: of dollars that they agreed to pay out to the
36:29
Speaker 2: states over twenty five years. Like, that's the part I
36:32
Speaker 2: don't get. But the problem is that the states, very
36:36
Speaker 2: few states actually said this money is designated for anti
36:39
Speaker 2: smoking programs, to pay for health care for smokers, or
36:44
Speaker 2: to repay public costs for healthcare that we spend on smokers.
36:50
Speaker 2: A lot of states don't do that, and in fact,
36:53
Speaker 2: most of the states use it to like fill budget
36:56
Speaker 2: gaps to build new roads. If there's rap, they do
37:00
Speaker 2: something called securitization, where they sell bonds against their future
37:04
Speaker 2: annual payment from the tobacco companies.
37:07
Speaker 3: Did you see that?
37:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's kind of you know, it's a shell
37:12
Speaker 1: game with the government in a way, In a lot
37:14
Speaker 1: of ways, I think.
37:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, because not only are they I mean, it's just
37:17
Speaker 2: unseemly in the first place, but secondly, when those bonds
37:21
Speaker 2: come due, when they get that Master Settlement Agreement annual
37:24
Speaker 2: payment to the state, they have to pay out not
37:27
Speaker 2: just the face value of the bonds that they sold,
37:30
Speaker 2: they have to use some of that money to pay
37:32
Speaker 2: the interest too, So the state's getting less than it
37:35
Speaker 2: would have if it didn't sell those bonds ahead of time. Right,
37:39
Speaker 2: So I think that's a sign of poor management of
37:42
Speaker 2: a state typically if you.
37:43
Speaker 1: Ask me, Yeah, for sure. I think in the end,
37:46
Speaker 1: less than three percent of these funds have gone to
37:50
Speaker 1: smoking prevention and cessation programs, which was a lot of
37:55
Speaker 1: the reason they initially said they were going to do this.
37:59
Speaker 1: And I think no state has funded anti tobacco programs
38:04
Speaker 1: at CDC recommended levels at all.
38:07
Speaker 2: Right, and some states even used them to help the
38:10
Speaker 2: tobacco industry. I know North Carolina, Oh man, they spent
38:15
Speaker 2: forty five billion dollars, I think on modernizing tobacco farms,
38:22
Speaker 2: not hey, here's money for your losses. And I think
38:24
Speaker 2: I said, forty forty two million, not like, here's some
38:29
Speaker 2: money to compensate you for your losses. Here's some money
38:32
Speaker 2: to get better at tobacco farming for the future. That's
38:35
Speaker 2: what That's what North Carolina spent some of its money on.
38:39
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think North Carolina big tobacco state. Obviously, they
38:43
Speaker 1: use seventy five percent of their settlement funds for tobacco production.
38:47
Speaker 1: It's crazy some of that to private tobacco producers like
38:51
Speaker 1: you talked about that had taken a hit. But also yeah,
38:54
Speaker 1: like you said, like, hey, you want a tobacco museum,
39:00
Speaker 1: will build it with that money.
39:01
Speaker 2: Right, And if we build it, they will come to
39:04
Speaker 2: the tobacco company.
39:05
Speaker 1: Oh man, that's hard to believe on that one.
39:07
Speaker 2: There's another thing too, The tobacco companies haven't exactly paid
39:10
Speaker 2: out all this money. They were supposed to pay out
39:12
Speaker 2: the couple hundred I think what it was, three hundred
39:15
Speaker 2: something billion dollars over twenty five years as part of
39:17
Speaker 2: the settlement in nineteen ninety eight. They have paid out,
39:21
Speaker 2: according to a press release from Vermont's Attorney General office,
39:26
Speaker 2: one hundred and seventy five billion, So I think less
39:29
Speaker 2: than half of what they said. And it's been a
39:32
Speaker 2: lot longer than twenty five years now, right. And one
39:35
Speaker 2: of the reasons why is because as part of the
39:38
Speaker 2: agreement the tobacco companies, there are two calculations that have
39:43
Speaker 2: to be taken into account. There has to be an
39:46
Speaker 2: inflation calculation that it's just for inflation, so that the
39:50
Speaker 2: states are getting their actual value of the dollars that
39:53
Speaker 2: the tobacco companies agreed to. That makes sense. There's also
39:57
Speaker 2: a sales formula that they have to calculate every year
40:02
Speaker 2: to take into account the amount of profits that they're
40:06
Speaker 2: losing to companies that aren't part of the Master Settlement
40:10
Speaker 2: Agreement and therefore aren't hamstrung by those payments, which means
40:15
Speaker 2: that in some cases, some years there have been the
40:20
Speaker 2: sales calculation has been larger than the inflation calculation. Right,
40:26
Speaker 2: So the states have shouldered the burden of competition for
40:31
Speaker 2: these tobacco companies, Like the States took on that loss
40:34
Speaker 2: for the tobacco companies, which is just disgusting to me.
40:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, when you just think about what's
40:40
Speaker 1: happened with the raising the cost of cigarettes, there's a
40:43
Speaker 1: lot of people that look at the settlement of like, well,
40:46
Speaker 1: now you're just getting like the tobacco companies aren't paying states,
40:49
Speaker 1: Like people who still smoke cigarettes are just funneling money
40:53
Speaker 1: through the tobacco companies to the states.
40:56
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a great way to put it, okay, Chuck.
41:01
Speaker 2: So one of the other things the legacies of the
41:03
Speaker 2: Master Settlement Agreement is it created a blueprint. I think
41:06
Speaker 2: you said this kind of early on for other ways
41:10
Speaker 2: that states could get together and create real change against
41:14
Speaker 2: corporate malfeasance, specifically, again in cases where there is harm
41:20
Speaker 2: that comes directly from using a product as directed or
41:25
Speaker 2: intended right, not abusing it or something you're just using
41:28
Speaker 2: it like it's supposed to be used and you're being harmed.
41:30
Speaker 2: So you have things like social media, opioids, climate change
41:34
Speaker 2: is a trickier one, but fast food and the reason
41:38
Speaker 2: why also they fit this Master Settlement Agreement framework is
41:42
Speaker 2: these companies are following like a lot of the same
41:46
Speaker 2: techniques that the tobacco industry laid down by starting back
41:50
Speaker 2: in the fifties.
41:51
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's interesting because there's there are two playbooks. On
41:56
Speaker 1: the one side, you have the government. Now that's like
41:58
Speaker 1: all right, now, we got a playbook moving forward, so
42:00
Speaker 1: we can sue Meta about social media and the harms
42:05
Speaker 1: to children and the fact that they know they're targeting
42:08
Speaker 1: children and harming children, or opioids of course with the
42:12
Speaker 1: pharmaceutical companies. But then there's that other playbook like you
42:15
Speaker 1: were talking about, where they end up getting sued. But
42:19
Speaker 1: Meta and the pharmaceutical companies were like, hey, you know
42:23
Speaker 1: what if we can get kids hooked on this stuff
42:25
Speaker 1: and market to children, then we can make a lot
42:28
Speaker 1: more money for investors.
42:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, a good example of that, not necessarily targeting children,
42:33
Speaker 2: but of just this completely screwing up the narrative for
42:36
Speaker 2: their own gain at the expense.
42:39
Speaker 3: Of people's lives.
42:40
Speaker 2: The opioid pharmaceutical industry with opioids basically floated this idea
42:47
Speaker 2: called pseudo addiction to where the people who were supposedly
42:51
Speaker 2: addicted to opioids weren't actually addicted. What was happening is
42:55
Speaker 2: that their pain wasn't being managed adequately. That's why they
42:58
Speaker 2: needed to take more. We're going around from doctor to doctor,
43:02
Speaker 2: and the answer the solution was to up their dose,
43:05
Speaker 2: don't cut them off, don't put them in treatment.
43:06
Speaker 3: Up their dose.
43:07
Speaker 2: That's what they really need, because it's not real addiction
43:10
Speaker 2: because you can't.
43:10
Speaker 3: Get addicted to opioids.
43:12
Speaker 2: They actually publicly said stuff like that, and I mean
43:16
Speaker 2: that's cause to go after them alone, you.
43:18
Speaker 1: Know, yeah, I mean, yeah, just as despicable as any
43:24
Speaker 1: of these huge corporations sort of issuing these really flimsy
43:28
Speaker 1: denials that the public just it just makes them look worse.
43:32
Speaker 1: You know, the public doesn't buy this stuff.
43:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's true now I think we did before.
43:37
Speaker 1: Yeah you know, yeah, you're probably right.
43:40
Speaker 3: You got anything else?
43:42
Speaker 1: I got nothing else. That's uh, this is we gotta Yeah.
43:46
Speaker 1: I feel like this is in a suite of episodes
43:48
Speaker 1: we've done over the years. Josh and Chuck take on the.
43:50
Speaker 2: World, big Industry. Well, Chuck doesn't have anything else. Chuck
43:56
Speaker 2: said the world, and I said big industry, So that
43:58
Speaker 2: combination obviously unlocked listener mail.
44:04
Speaker 1: Hey, guys, amongst my favorite things, and that's favorite with
44:08
Speaker 1: an ou So I think I know where Rebecca's from,
44:12
Speaker 1: or at least you know one of a few places
44:14
Speaker 1: she could be from. One of my favorite things about
44:17
Speaker 1: stuff you should know is Josh's jokes that don't land. Wow,
44:21
Speaker 1: all right, absolutely hates my jokes that don't land, by
44:25
Speaker 1: the way, so you should feel good and counting how
44:28
Speaker 1: many no, no, no, okay, and counting how many times
44:32
Speaker 1: Chuck says that's right in an episode, I guess i'd
44:35
Speaker 1: feel like I say sure more.
44:36
Speaker 2: Than more than that's right, but you say for sure
44:38
Speaker 2: for sure, yeah for sure, But just one time I
44:41
Speaker 2: was adding a for sure to the first for sure
44:44
Speaker 2: for sure.
44:45
Speaker 1: My absolute favorite thing, though, guys has to be the
44:48
Speaker 1: interlude jingles before and after.
44:49
Speaker 3: Yeah.
44:50
Speaker 1: I love how the jingle always matches the theme of
44:51
Speaker 1: the show. For example, the short stuff on the Benefits
44:54
Speaker 1: of Singing in a group had the barbershop Quartet episode
44:57
Speaker 1: about Shakespeare had the green sleeve style jingle. In Schoolhouse
45:00
Speaker 1: Rock had the queen style jingle. My favorite one might
45:03
Speaker 1: have been the techno punk jingles on the Cyberpunk episode,
45:07
Speaker 1: which was fantastic. All that to say, shout out to
45:09
Speaker 1: Jerry and the folks who produce these. They are appreciated,
45:13
Speaker 1: and Rebecca, I'm glad you brought this up. We said
45:15
Speaker 1: it a lot over the years, but it always bears
45:18
Speaker 1: repeating that, you know, these are written by Stuff you
45:19
Speaker 1: should Know listers and produced and performed and we just
45:23
Speaker 1: get these and people are like, hey, use this thing.
45:25
Speaker 1: I made it as a love letter to the show.
45:28
Speaker 1: And then Jerry does a great job of selecting the
45:30
Speaker 1: episodes where it has a nice bit, so we always
45:33
Speaker 1: like reiterating this is how it works, and Rebecca since
45:38
Speaker 1: kindess regards in a PS. Shout out to Rebecca's twin
45:41
Speaker 1: sister Lauren, who introduced Rebecca to Stuff you Should Know
45:44
Speaker 1: many years ago and they have been regularly discussing episodes
45:48
Speaker 1: weekly since that's awesome.
45:51
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you. We love it when a family member
45:53
Speaker 2: or friend turns somebody onto Stuff you Should Know and
45:56
Speaker 2: then they end up talking about or listening together.
45:59
Speaker 3: That's kind of the point.
46:01
Speaker 1: That's how a community has formed. Everybody.
46:02
Speaker 2: Also shout out to Dave and Ben too, who also
46:05
Speaker 2: do a pretty boss job of selecting jingles, but I.
46:08
Speaker 3: Think Jerry's probably the goat.
46:11
Speaker 1: Agreed.
46:12
Speaker 2: If you want to be like Rebecca and by proxy
46:15
Speaker 2: Lauren and get in touch with this via email, all
46:18
Speaker 2: you have to do is send it off to Stuff
46:20
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46:26
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