Wellll... At least one of the execs saw the writing on the wall....
"Mr. Parrish was one of the tobacco company executives who fought Dr. Kessler and the F.D.A.; indeed, as a senior vice president for Philip Morris, then, as now, the country’s biggest tobacco company, he pretty much led the charge, publicly denouncing Mr. Kessler as a “neo-prohibitionist.”
But even before the Supreme Court made its ruling, Mr. Parrish had come to the conclusion that the tobacco industry needed to be regulated, something he began to talk to Dr. Kessler about even before he went public. There has always been a great deal of skepticism about Philip Morris’ about-face "
"Rather, he said, it was his strong belief that federal regulation “could completely transform the industry.” In particular, Mr. Parrish believed that F.D.A. regulation could help push the industry to innovate — coming up with cigarettes, or cigarettelike products, that were less lethal. "
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/20/business/20nocera.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1
That is a riot. These regulations pretty much mandate that there will be no innovation. Why would a company try to make a safer cigarette when they have to navigate hectares of red tape. I have mentioned this on ECF before, but in grad school (late 90s) I had a professor who used to work at a major tobacco company. This would have been late-80s early 90s that the work was going on. They had come up with (what they were sure was) a safer cigarette, heat-not-burn, if I understood it correctly. They had to ditch the product because it would have been too difficult and expensive to get it approved. He actually had some of the cigarettes there in the class with him and I got to take a puff. It was rather an eye opening experience for me and I didn't quite understand the full irony of it at the time. I do remember wishing that the products had been brought to market because I was an inveterate smoker at the time.