Much Work Needed to Prevent Smoking, U.S. Official Testifies

More needs to be done to combat smoking and the disease burden it inflicts on society, U.S. Surgeon General Richard H. Carmona testified Tuesday in the government’s racketeering case against cigarette makers.

“There is clearly work that needs to be done in the future,” Carmona told U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler in Washington as the government laid out a case for changes in the tobacco industry if the judge concludes that it violated racketeering law.

Carmona cited a 2004 report by his office on the health consequences of smoking that said tobacco-related death and disease would continue “until tobacco prevention and control efforts worldwide are commensurate with the harm caused by tobacco use.”

The government charges that cigarette makers deceived the public for years about the dangers of smoking.

The firms deny that they illegally conspired to promote smoking and say that the government has no grounds to pursue them after they drastically overhauled marketing practices under terms of a 1998 state settlement.

Later witnesses to be called by the government will propose sanctions such as forcing cigarette companies to spend billions of dollars to fund a national smoking cessation program.

An appeals court in February barred the government from seeking $280 billion in past industry profits as a penalty.

Carmona spent much of the day parrying questions from tobacco industry lawyer David Bernick, who told Kessler that the 2004 surgeon general’s report had not mentioned several possible remedies to be raised by government witnesses.

Carmona acknowledged that many of the anti-smoking efforts were handled at the state level. But he said there also had been some nationwide anti-smoking initiatives he had supported.

In any case, Carmona said, the 2004 report was not intended to be a comprehensive list of all possible remedies. “We want to just set the path that needs to be taken in the future,” he said.