OPINION

STATE OF DENIAL

It was hardly surprising that the members of the DE1il's Joint Committee on
Health and Children reacted with incredulity to the answers given to some of
their questions on the subject of smoking and health when those questions
were posed last week to representatives of the Gallaher Group, manufacturers
of Benson and Hedges and Silk Cut cigarettes. Indeed, it would be fair to
ask just where Gallahers have been these past decades as the evidence for
the addictive, health-damaging and lethal effects of smoking was building
up. Or where have they been this past year while their counterparts in the
American tobacco industry have been alternating between confrontation and
capitulation with governmental agencies in the United States?

Whose cause did Mr Ian Birks, the head of corporate affairs in Gallahers,
think he was serving when he asserted that smoking was merely a risk factor
in illnesses like lung cancer and that smoking was a habit akin to cravings
for eating sweets or using the Internet rather than an addiction to nicotine?

He declared that the Gallaher Group was defending itself against litigation
in the United Kingdom and that it would also defend itself against a number
of writs being prepared in Ireland. "We will be defending ourselves in
Ireland and we will not be settling those cases", he said. Time will tell
what the outcome of those cases is.

Are Gallahers not aware of the fact that in March last year in the United
States Liggetts, the manufacturers of Chesterfield cigarettes, admitted in
the course of making a settlement with prosecutors in 22 states, that
tobacco smoking was addictive, that it caused cancer and diseases of the
heart and lungs?

Are they not further aware of the fact that Liggetts also, in the course of
making that settlement, handed over hundreds of documents to be filed in
state courts and that these are very likely to contain evidence that will be
used in the prosecution of cases against American tobacco companies?

Do Gallahers seriously expect people to believe that there are no networks
of communication within the international industry of which they are a part?

It may be, of course, that Mr Birks was trying to keep Gallahers' powder dry
until such time as cases pending against them come to court either here or
in the United Kingdom. That is a perfectly legitimate strategy.

But his statements to the Joint Committee did not seem very persuasive to
the members of the committee who quizzed him. They will not seem remotely
persuasive to any who have seen the mountain of scientific evidence which
shows smoking to be addictive, to be causative of lung cancer and a likely
cause of other cancers, and to be a significant contributor to the
development of coronary and other arterial diseases, not to mention chronic
bronchitis and emphysema.

That evidence, and the likely content of the documents which Liggetts
surrendered to the American courts, was sufficient for the larger tobacco
manufacturers in the United States to treat with states' attorneys for a
Liggett-style settlement only weeks after they had tried to ridicule the
Liggett settlement with a mixture of denial, dismissal and denigration.
Those negotiations ultimately collapsed when Senator John McCain's Bill was
tabled in the US Senate last April and the tobacco majors, having found it
to be too punitive of them, decided to cut loose and take their chances.

It seems fair to say, given the weight of evidence available, that those
chances are not too good. But that seems not to matter to Gallahers: they
seem still to be in a state of denial and dismissal.

Checked-by: Melodi Cornett