Update: Take That Big Tobacco! The Class Action Lawsuits Begin

Yay Quebec for being opportunistic enough to jump right in there with a lawsuit!

CBC News: More bad news for the Canadian tobacco industry

In an interview Friday, McCarty said Imperial's liability insurance would only cover an "insignificant" portion of any legal judgements.

He said when the U.S. industry settlement was reached seven years ago, "cigarettes were a buck a pack. So what they did is increase the price of their product to pay for the settlement over 25 years. We don't have that option. Our cigarettes are already nine bucks a pop."

What I love is that companies like this make contradictory arguments. One one hand, they love talking about the market, i.e., there's a market for cigarettes or we wouldn't be able to sell them. On the other hand, they freak out when influences on the market threaten to raise the price of their goods. I'm sorry, but government regulation on cigarettes essentially is the cost of compensating Canada for elevated Medicare costs resulting from the product, so that isn't an artificial increase on the price. In the US, they don't have universal healthcare so people absorbed their own costs of smoking. That's one reason why cigarettes were cheaper in the United States. So, Imperial Tobacco, your price is $9. If you pass the costs of a lawsuit on to consumers, the price will rise and demand will fall. Suck it up. Understand that demand is dropping for your product. You have no right to sell the same amount of cigarettes at a low price over time. That's the way of the market.

McCarty wants to rally support from the other so-called "sin" industries, saying British Columbia has carved "a dangerous path" by assuming it can take on an industry "by passing a special law allowing it to sue them. Today it's tobacco, tomorrow it could be anybody. It could be the fast food industry, alcohol, junk food, gambling."

No, Imperial Tobacco, no it could not be anybody. It could only be somebody who sells a dangerous product and/or mislead the public about the risks of using said product. So, I doubt Canada will sue Le Chateau for having shabby, overpriced clothes since the risks of buying from them are exasperatingly clear. Nor will anybody sue Aldo shoes for their shoddy products since, although it wasn't clear at first, it takes only one or two shoe purchases to realize that their shoes totally fall apart after a couple weeks of normal use. Also, buying crappy clothes/shoes doesn't leave long lasting negative effects on one's health. Nor does it permanently impair one's fashion sense, thank God for that.