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by Donald B. Ardell, Ph. D.
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Wellness in the Headlines
(Don's Report to the World)

Applying Wellness Principles to the Three Billion Dollar Plus Tobacco Verdict in Los Angeles --Who Is Responsible?

Monday June 18, 2001

The recent tobacco case in Los Angeles cries out for a self-management perspective. In case you have not heard, here is what happened. After a seven-week trial, a longtime smoker with lung cancer won $3 billion in punitive damages and $5.5 million in general damages from the Philip Morris Companies. Richard Boeken, 56, who admitted to smoking at least two packs of the company's Marlboro cigarettes a day for forty years and to being dependent on heroin, methadone and alcohol at times during this period, was granted this amount -- the largest individual civil award ever levied against a tobacco company. The Los Angeles County Superior Court jury found for the plaintiff based upon their judgment that Philip Morris Companies were guilty of six counts of fraud, negligence and making a defective product.

When I apply wellness principles to this three billion dollar plus tobacco verdict, I conclude that something is not quite right. If I had forty years left and could count on a similar verdict in 2041, I might take up a two pack a day habit myself! Hey, I could do a lot of triathlons with $3 billion in sponsorship from Philip Morris. Unlike Mr. Boeken, I could choose to be victimized by the tobacco giant but not be dependent upon heroin, methadone and alcohol at the same time -- so maybe my problems after forty years would not be all THAT bad (though there might be other problems at age 103).

The good news here is that this ludicrous judgment that rewarded idiocy will be overturned on appeal. The bad news is that it sends the wrong message to smokers and non-smokers alike about who is responsible for what goes well or poorly in one's life.

Philip Morris and the other tobacco companies are vile, deceptive, fraudulent, negligent and it would not surprise me to learn that they torture animals and abuse babies and beat up on old people and sell secrets to the Commies and were involved in the Kennedy assassination and engage in all manner of heinous and villainous acts inspired by Satan and Saddam Hussein and maybe even Osama bin Laden. They do NOT, however, make a defective product. The product they make does EXACTLY what it is intended to do, namely, it gives a weird form of pleasure to misguided teen-agers! After a few such furtive pleasures, it then provides a momentary nicotine fix that relieves their addiction to the product for the next forty or more years. There's nothing defective about this from the tobacco company perspective! In fact, it works brilliantly.

What IS defective is the judgment of Mr. Boeken and the L.A. jury in thinking that anyone but the smoker is responsible for the damages caused by the decision to start smoking and continue to do so for forty years or for any length of time.

That's my take on this news event. What do YOU think?

Domain: mental
Subdomain: stress management

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