Will people ever get the message?

Back in 2006 a federal judge ordered tobacco companies to print a new warning on cartons which would say, “Cigarette companies intentionally designed cigarettes with enough nicotine to create and sustain addiction.”

The judge was basically forcing a corporation to wear a scarlet letter on its breast – to shame itself.

Well, the tobacco companies appealed, and this week in the DC Court of Appeals, a judge asked the attorney for Phillip Morris why he had a problem with that statement. “It’s certainly not confusing to me,” said the judge.

“Well our point has been that the implication is that we spike cigarettes with nicotine, which actually is not true,” said the lawyer.

The Phillip Morris lawyer went on to say, “What the court characterized as a manipulation of the nicotine content could be viewed as certain reduction steps, to smooth out the taste of cigarettes and other things.”

They were only trying to smooth out the taste! Kind of like making a candy bar. Actually, I think he’s onto something there.

For years, the anti-tobacco movement has been trying to scare people away from cigarettes with increasingly strident warnings and pictures of mouth cancer that turn you into a pillar of salt.

But people smoke anyway!

But suppose you just had a label on the cigarette package that says simply, “We were only trying to smooth out the taste.”

Now that would get people to stop smoking.