(Cindy Chant editorial)

The PEI government is in the early stages of litigation against tobacco companies whose products have been sold on the Island. The Province will be seeking damages for the recovery of health care costs from 1950 to the present. It is a foreseeable uphill climb, but it is also a fight that will not go unnoticed.

Tobacco companies for decades denied smoking was dangerous or caused cancer.

Ontario is the latest Canadian province to proceed with a lawsuit to recoup money for smoking-related illnesses. That province is seeking a whopping $50 billion in damages.Ontario officials and the Canadian Cancer Society argue a successful lawsuit could serve to reduce smoking in that province. 

Well, I am no expert, but how does going after the big tobacco companies affect individual smokers? The Ontario statement goes on to say by winning the court battle the government will need to spend less health-care money on smoking-related illnesses. What?

According to statistics provided by quitsmoking.com “smokers are 10 times as likely to get lung cancer and emphysema as nonsmokers.”

Ten times more likely does not make lung cancer a “smokers only” disease. How will it allow the courts to go after companies? Simply because smoking makes it more likely the person will have something happen to them as a result of using the product?

Someone once told me their grandmother ate bread dipped in bacon grease almost every morning for breakfast. She was 97 when she passed away. So that is like saying if you eat grease every day you are 10 times more likely to live to the ripe old age of 100. Hardly.

The Province is looking to go back through 62 years of records. For one thing, records back then were not as detailed as the computerized charts used by health care professionals today. Secondly, specialists didn’t know then what they have learned within the last few years, of the results of someone smoking most of their lives. With these two things in mind, how would it be possible to single out tobacco companies as being the cause?

Is it conceivable to think a person might have been afflicted with cancer at some point in their lives anyway (smoker or not)?

You hear all the time about how a healthy person who eats the right things, exercises daily and does not have a bad habit to speak of, dies suddenly of a heart attack. Could it be directly connected to a certain lifestyle choice? Not likely.

The PEI government in its recent litigation against the large tobacco companies will have to produce all the documentation, both paper and electronic versions, supporting their claim of how tobacco kills. I pity the poor individuals who will have to sort through all potentially relevant records from the last six decades. That’s the time tobacco companies first discovered the damaging health effects of tobacco use.

Next, will Canadian provinces go after bubble gum producers because the product causes cavities or fast food establishments for causing obesity?

Wait a minute, that one has already been tried in America for knowingly serving food that causes obesity and disease. The seven plaintiffs, all obese, say they were tricked into believing that the food was good for them. But that is another story.

What is the Province’s real motive? What is in it for the families who have lost a loved one to cancer? 

It may be a long, hard road for PEI’s department of Environment, Labour and Justice. All the power to them.