Chewing tobacco maker agrees to $5M settlement

[xg4bx]

NEW HAVEN, Conn. – The maker of Skoal and Copenhagen smokeless tobacco has agreed to pay $5 million to the family of a man who died of mouth cancer in what is believed to be the first wrongful-death settlement won from a chewing tobacco company.

Gottlieb predicted more lawsuits targeting smokeless tobacco would follow, calling the settlement "a wake-up call" to plaintiffs' attorneys "that there are a lot of victims of smokeless tobacco use out there, and it's possible these cases can be successful."

Chewing tobacco maker agrees to $5M settlement - Yahoo! News


here we go again.....

 

[kristin]

My take is they settled because of sending those products to children, not because smokeless tobacco has a high incedence of oral cancer - because it doesn't.

Oral cancer is extremely rare and most of it can be traced to smoking - which has double the risk of smokeless tobacco use. The risk of oral cancer from smokeless tobacco is something like 1/2% to 1%. Unfortunately, the risk to non-tobacco users is less than 1/2%, which allows anti-tobacco groups to state that smokeless tobacco "doubles your risk of oral cancer" - true, but misleading unless you know how rare oral cancer really is.