Taxation is an age-old method by which the government raises money. Alcoholic beverages have been taxed since colonial times, and tobacco products have been taxed since 1863. The alcohol and tobacco industries contribute a great deal of tax money to federal, state, and local governments. According to the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States, Inc. (DISCUS), liquor is the most highly taxed…
In addition to taxation, the alcoholic beverage and tobacco industries are subject to federal and state laws that regulate factors such as sales, advertising, and shipping. The best-known pieces of legislation regarding alcohol are the Eighteenth and Twenty-first Amendments to the Constitution. The Eighteenth Amendment prohibited the manufacture, sale, and importation of alcoholic beverages. Ratif…
Between 1960 and 1988, approximately three hundred lawsuits sought damages from tobacco companies for smoking-related illnesses; courts, though, consistently held that people who choose to smoke are responsible for the health consequences of that decision. But in 1988, a tobacco company was ordered to pay damages for the first time. A federal jury in Newark, New Jersey, ordered Liggett Group, Inc.…
On November 23, 1998, attorneys general from forty-six states (excluding the four states that had previously settled), five territories, and the District of Columbia signed an agreement with the four largest cigarette companies—Philip Morris, RJ Reynolds, Brown & Williamson, and Lorillard—to settle all the state lawsuits brought in order to recover the Medicaid costs of treati…
The tobacco industry faces hundreds of individual cases across the country, including cases filed by health insurers. The following are examples of some of these cases. In March 1999 a state jury in Portland, Oregon, in Williams v. Philip Morris (No. 02-1553), ordered Philip Morris to pay $79.5 million to the family of a man who smoked Marlboro cigarettes for forty years prior to his death in 1997…
The American Lung Association's State of Tobacco Control: 2004 report analyzes the performance of individual states in tobacco prevention measures. The report evaluated states in key areas such as smoke-free air, cigarette taxation, and restricting youths' access to tobacco. The majority of states were assigned a failing grade in these categories. Thirty-four states and the District …
Please include a link to this page if you have found this material useful for research or writing a related article. Content on this website is from high-quality, licensed material originally published in print form. You can always be sure you're reading unbiased, factual, and accurate information.
Highlight the text below, right-click, and select “copy”. Paste the link into your website, email, or any other HTML document.
User Comments Add a comment…