On August 17, 2006, Judge Gladys Kessler of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia issued her monumental Final Opinion in U.S. v. Philip Morris, the government’s massive case against racketeer cigarette manufacturers. In her exhaustively detailed Opinion, Judge Kessler found the tobacco companies conspired for decades to defraud the public about the health risks associated with smoking. The material cited in the Final Opinion provides a wealth of information – summarized in our resource The Verdict Is In ‒ about how the tobacco companies misled the public by, for example, luring kids to use products that the industry manipulated to make more addictive. Information unearthed in this lawsuit also provides hard evidence for attorneys building a case for tobacco control laws and policies or facing legal challenges to tobacco control measures.

Sharon Eubanks, the lead counsel who represented the U.S. Department of Justice in this historic tobacco case, recently shared her thoughts on the ruling’s impact, the progress of tobacco control over the last decade, and related issues in the video above.

For more information about U.S. v. Philip Morris, visit our web page covering the case.

August 17, 2016