Advantages of the anti-tobacco law

According to a new survey by PLoS Medicine, almost every province in Canada has introduced or passed legislation to recover health-care costs from tobacco companies. In the mid-1990s, similar lawsuits were undertaken in the US, which led to the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement involving 50 states and a payment by tobacco companies of $246 billion US over 25 years to cover the health-care costs resulting from use of their products.

The news comes the same week that a hard-hitting editorial in The Lancet admonishes tobacco companies for boasting about increased sales in 2010 and “extending the epidemic of death.”