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My first guest is Paris Hilton, Shakira, Luke and Yerim.

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You have surprises, many surprises.

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It's lemonade.

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The cast of Obsession on set, there

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Welcome to Stuff youf Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

Chuck Bryant

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and Jerry's here, too. And this is stuff you should know, I think part of our ongoing corporate malfeasance edition.

Josh Clark

Yeah, for sure. And the beginning of this episode ties in a lot with. We did an episode about the history of the cigarette.

Lele Pons

Sure.

Josh Clark

Like, just the thing that you shouldn't put in your mouth, but people do, right? And so we're gonna talk a little bit about that here at the beginning because you need to know a little bit about that as it leads up to what were the, you know, the lawsuits against big tobacco. And we should start by saying that it's been a long time that we've known that tobacco and smoking was really bad for you and would kill you like the 1920s we knew for sure. The 1950s, we really, really knew. And the 1960s is when John F. Kennedy finally came out via his surgeon general, Luther Terry, and said, all right, everybody, it's 1964. I'm finally gonna issue a government report based on about a dozen studies with lots of data, about a million male smokers. And this stuff is really bad for you, so we're going to have to start putting warning labels on packages.

Chuck Bryant

Yeah. The great thing about those warning labels, though, is you were educated to imagine Sammy Davis Jr. Saying it in your head.

Josh Clark

That's right.

Chuck Bryant

So the cigarette companies, this is the beginning of their playbook. And their playbook was basically, nuh. Prove it. You can't prove it. This is the whole idea of settled science, the idea that. Which is just a complete oxymoron. Science is never settled. It's a constant, ongoing process. But the idea that you have to have 100% definitive proof before you can even begin talking about whether something is harmful or not and really exploiting and manipulating the public through really horrible means. This is where that all started. And the first response that cigarette companies came up with was to say, all right, how about we put filters on cigarettes? Because as everybody knows, cigarettes make your throat kind of scratchy. Sometimes they can make you hoarse. And that's okay. That's just part of smoking. These new filters are going to help with all of that. And there you go. Cigarettes are healthy, everybody.

Josh Clark

That's right. In the 60s and 70s, that's when we saw lighter cigarettes or lotar cigarettes. In the 50s, they got really sort of organized and official about their PR campaigns, I guess, their propaganda campaigns, when they formed the Tobacco Industry Research Committee under the guise of studying the health hazards of smoking. But it was very much just a PR move. They put out an ad called A Frank Statement to Cigarette Smokers early on, which said, like, hey, we're really like, your health is paramount to us as we sell you cigarettes. It's hard not to laugh because it's just so dumb to think about that people would have bought this.

Chuck Bryant

Yeah. But also just so cynical that they would even see this too, you know?

Josh Clark

But they said, all right, we're really gonna pledge to research this, everyone, because we care about your health. But also, again, like, you can't really prove that it's just the cigarettes. Like, how do you know that these people dying of lung cancer didn't also get it from all the other stuff that's going on in the world?

Chuck Bryant

Yeah. And actually that would become kind of codified in what's called the Roper proposal. There was a Tobacco Institute vice president. So in addition to the Tobacco Industry Research Committee, they also came up with the Tobacco Industry Tobacco Institute, and then they renamed the tirc, the Council for Tobacco Research. No word of the industry in it. So it's even more trustworthy. Right. And Fred Panzer was vice president of the Tobacco Institute Institute, and he wrote a memo in 1972 that said, essentially, here's what we should do. We need to create doubt about the health charge without actually denying it. And essentially it's a variation on the theme that the case is not proved. And he said kind of what you were saying, that, like, these are, like, you can't really prove that it's cigarettes. So, for example, extroverts are more likely to smoke cigarettes, but they're also more likely to get out in the world and dropped out of a heart attack. So maybe it's just that extroverts smoke cigarettes or that. There was one called the Constitutional Hypothesis that was people who get sick from smoking are biologically predisposed to get sick in general. So it's really them. This was all just thrown about in 1972 to basically lie to the public and confuse the public about whether or not cigarettes were unhealthy or harmful.

Josh Clark

Yeah. So they're pushing this campaign out behind the scenes. They are just throwing in the back file drawer every study that they had that showed that nicotine was addictive, that smoking was bad for you. Like, they're suppressing that information as well as at the same time targeting children with product placement in movies, specifically Superman II in 1981 with Marlboro. Obviously, we've talked about Camel Joe before in the history of the cigarette.

Chuck Bryant

Joe Kimmel.

Josh Clark

That was what I say. Camel Joe. Yeah, I like Camel Joe. Okay, we should leave all this in there except for the beep. Although there's plenty of those in episodes.

Chuck Bryant

Yeah, let's get the beep out.

Josh Clark

So that was in 1988. I like Camel Joe.

Chuck Bryant

I like Camel, too.

Josh Clark

I always called him Camel Joe. I didn't know that wasn't the name.

Chuck Bryant

I'm sure there's some retired tobacco industry guy who's like, man, we should have called him Camel Joe. That is way better.

Josh Clark

Here's a Gen X stat for you, which is fairly staggering but completely believable. Youth smoking, like kids. Teenager smoking had been on the decline kind of through the 70s and 80s for the most part. And then in the 90s, when Gen X came around to, like, prime smoking age, it really Jumped it hit an all time high in 1997 of 36.4% of youth were smoking. Adults were smoking at 24.7% at the time. And that's just a staggering number. I think it's at like 3 point something percent now. So gen Xers were smoking at a rate of 36%.

Chuck Bryant

Yeah. And there's two things that they suggest had to do with that huge jump in youth smoking. One was this big campaign and push to target youth smokers. The tobacco industry called them replacement smokers. They would replace the other lifelong smokers that died off from smoking. Right. And that's the thing too, is like one of the things about smoking. Very few people start smoking as adults. We call them total morons. Most people who smoke started smoking in adolescence. So the tobacco industry had every incentive to go after kids. They just knew that society would not allow them to do that if they did it overtly. So they had to do it, you know, kind of under the radar with Camel Joe. The other thing is that there was a price war that started in the mid-90s and that they think that this, the drop in the price of cigarettes made it more likely for younger kids to smoke because younger kids are more price sensitive than older people who are smokers.

Josh Clark

Remember how cheap cigarettes were back then? Yeah, like buck 25 a pack or something.

Chuck Bryant

For sure.

Josh Clark

Yeah. I mean, I wasn't a regular smoker. I occasionally smoked, as we talked about before, so I wasn't like buying packs, but I sold them at the Golden Pantry in Athens, Georgia on the east side. And cigarettes were cheap. And they're. Somebody told me the day that they were like 12 to $15 and like 20 something bucks in new York a pack.

Chuck Bryant

I believe that. I totally believe that. Boy.

Josh Clark

Well, we'll see why here in a minute.

Chuck Bryant

So, yeah, one of the other things too that they're doing at the same time, besides suppressing studies, sowing doubt and confusion among the public about the harm of cigarettes. They're just out and out denying publicly that not only are cigarettes not harmful, they're not even addictive. That as recently as 1994, they were publicly saying, like the head of Philip Morris was saying in interviews, we do not believe cigarettes are addictive in the 90s. People had known like all you had to do is ask a smoker back in the 50s if they were addicted to cigarettes and they could tell you that they probably were. And like this, the, the industry in the 90s still wouldn't fess up to that. Like that was their tactic. Just a complete solid wall with zero cracks in it over and over again. Being reinforced publicly.

Josh Clark

Yeah, actually, in the 1950s, I think they probably said, like, no, I don't think they're addicted, but do you have a cigarette? Can I have a cigarette?

Chuck Bryant

Right.

Josh Clark

I see a guy over there smoking. You think he has an extra cigarette for me?

Chuck Bryant

Right.

Josh Clark

All right, so in the 1950s, we need to start with sort of lawsuit talk. There were a lot of lawsuits, all unsuccessful. By the mid-90s, when they were still saying that it wasn't addictive, there were at least 400 lawsuits that they never lost, they never settled. They had 100% record.

Chuck Bryant

That's crazy.

Josh Clark

Which is staggering to learn. They had, obviously, a ton of money to form the best legal representation they could. But they were also actively lobbying state governments about making it harder to sue about tort reform, because, like, hey, tobacco's a natural product, so cigarettes fall into that category, like, despite all the other stuff that's in there. So you can't sue somebody for packaging a natural thing and selling it to people.

Chuck Bryant

Yeah, that was the other thing they were doing, too, is they were really lobbying government really effectively. Like, they spent a lot of money on lobbyists. Right.

Josh Clark

Not like now.

Chuck Bryant

So, yeah, they were like the Teflon don of industries, I guess the tobacco industry was. What did you just say? Not like now? Because I picked up, like, facetious. Yeah. What were you mentioning?

Josh Clark

I'm sure they're still pouring tons of money into the lobby.

Chuck Bryant

Oh, sure, sure. Yeah, I'm sure, too. But so they were. They were just completely untouchable. Like, I mean, if you have 100% record, that in and of itself will prevent people from filing suit against you. Right.

Josh Clark

Yeah. Because it's expensive.

Chuck Bryant

It is. Right. And you're just like, I'm not going to win, or the chances of me winning are so low, I might not even file suit. So the state also, we should mention Congress is doing almost nothing about this at this point. So the state attorneys general, William Safire, just smiled from heaven. Led by a guy named Michael Moore. He was the attorney general for Mississippi. They got together and they said, well, if the federal government's not going to do anything about it, were going to. And one state might not be able to take on the tobacco industry, but every State, Territory, and D.C. together definitely can take on the tobacco industry. Not only can we take them on, we can seriously threaten to bankrupt the entire tobacco industry right out of existence if we. If we really try.

Josh Clark

Yeah. And they. They played their cards right because they Were like, how can we best go at them? Maybe Medicaid is the way to do it, because we have these Medicaid programs through our individual states that are not going bankrupt, but they're in bad shape in a lot of cases because they're treating all these smokers who are really expensive to get through lung cancer treatment. And they have deceived us for all these years. So let's go after them for RICO status, like fraud and racketeering. And that'll send a shiver even through the spine of a Teflon don. And they were turning up, like Livia says, like, literal truckloads of documents from the industry about them selling to teenagers, burying studies, covering up what they knew about how addictive everything was. And there were. I mean, this would be a good sort of thriller movie, almost like a Soderbergh kind of thing. He'd probably do a great job with it where, like, they're erasing, like, documents out of offices while they're trying to actively, like, bury these documents. Like, I think the guy from Texas was literally trying to put papers on a private jet so they could be taken to a district judge before the state court could seal them up. Because once the feds are investigating, it can't be sealed at the state level.

Chuck Bryant

Right. Or even if they do steal it at the state level, this federal district judge is like, that doesn't apply to me. So I can make these public or part of a court case. Right? So, yeah, I mean, yeah, that is like a thriller. And there is something that kind of touched on this. It was the Insider with. Who is the Australian actor who used to get in fights all the time?

Josh Clark

Russell Crowe.

Chuck Bryant

Yeah. Russell Crowe is Jeffrey Wigand, I think, who was, like, this whistleblower in the tobacco industry. It was great. I think that was a Michael Mann movie. Michael Mann, man, I nailed it.

Josh Clark

You're just nailing all of it.

Chuck Bryant

I should be a guest on Movie Crush.

Josh Clark

Oh, man. If only.

Chuck Bryant

But one of the other things you kind of touched on their strategy, like, the focusing on lying to the public and targeting teens. That was a really smart strategy, because if they were just like, cigarettes are harmful and we need to get rid of them, a lot of adults are like, you don't need to tell me whether I should smoke or not. I can kill myself if I want to. So they left that part alone, and they went after the fact that they were targeting teens and lying to the public, because the public sentiment can get behind those two things. Like, yeah, kids are out of bounds. We don't want them smoking. And, you know, we were lied to all these years by these same people. Yeah, go get them. So that was a really smart strategy that these attorneys general, like, took on. Like, it was amazing. An amazing court angle, I think, is what they call them.

Rebecca Nagle

Yeah.

Josh Clark

What a chord angle. Look at that. Yeah, for sure. And the writing was on the wall for investors because we're talking about hundreds of billions of dollars at stake. And they were like, hey, this is going to look really bad and our stock prices are going to really go in the tank. And so you got to cut a deal here, which the tobacco company never had thought about. Cause they had not only lost. Never lost. They never settled anything. So finally, In April of 97, they were set to go to trial in a few months. And they're like, all right, let's get a meeting set up with this Michael Moore character from Mississippi, not the movie guy, obviously, and an attorney for tobacco free kids who was working with the states about all the marketing toward kids with Camel Joe and everybody. So they started negotiating, like, all right, out of the gate. Let's just say, we'll get rid of Camel Joe. We love him. Kids love him. But we'll get rid of him and the Marlboro man, if that makes you happy, Kramer. And then a few months later in June, they said, all right, we gotta start talking, like, hash out the money part. So how does 368 and a half billion dollars sound over 25 years as just an opening salvo.

Chuck Bryant

Yeah. And the states were like, I was not expecting that, actually. But they. So they were like, okay, here's the problem, though. These are like, we need to bring the feds in. Like, the Congress has to approve of this deal the way that we've set it up. And there were some federal aspects to it. One was that the FDA would start regulating tobacco products. Another one was that the companies, these tobacco companies would be protected against any further civil and class action lawsuits.

Josh Clark

This is the big one.

Chuck Bryant

Yeah. Yeah. In exchange, they would create a fund to pay some of those people off. And then there would also be federal restrictions on indoor smoking. And this did not go very far because of that protection of the companies. Right.

Josh Clark

Yeah. I mean, that was the sticking point. I think they could have not too happily lived with the rest of it. But that was a big one as far as Congress. And soon enough, the American people were like, we can't have that.

Chuck Bryant

No.

Josh Clark

So Congress had a bill to ratify, or at least considering a bill to ratify it. Universal Tobacco Settlement Act s 1414. They were debating it. All this disclosure comes out and they're like, man, they were really awful companies and it's worse than we thought even. And the idea of them being protected moving forward, like, isn't going to fly. So the Late Senator John McCain said, All right, how about S14 15, where there's more money? Like, how does 520 billion sound? And we're not going to protect you from now on. Like, you're, you can be sued moving forward, too.

Chuck Bryant

Yeah, the industry lobbied, like, they've never lobbied before to keep this from getting passed through. And again, you mentioned the stock prices. When all these stuff, this stuff is going on, their stocks are tanking when you know there would be a win for. In the negotiations for the tobacco companies, their stock prices would go back up. It's all very cynical. And they. The stock price went back up after McCain's bill did not get passed. And one of the reasons it wasn't passed is because other senators added, like, riders that had nothing to do with tobacco and I'm guessing unpopular riders, probably at the behest of the tobacco companies. I could not find the riders to save my life, to basically sink this bill. You know, like, like, imagine if you had this great bill and then somebody's like, I'm also adding a rider to repeal the requirement for child sexual predators from having to register and they can live by schools. Now your bill's not going to pass. And I get the impression that that's kind of what happened to McCain's bill.

Josh Clark

Yeah, for sure. There was another thing we just sort of should mention in passing. At least it was another suit in October of 97. This is while they're debating these original bills in Congress. Where they did settle, it was a separate class action suit that was filed in 91 by flight attendants in the United States saying, like, hey, smoking sections and planes are like, killing us. And it's pretty awful. So it was a husband and wife team named Stanley and Susan Rosenblatt who filed this one. And they ended up settling for $300 million to fund medical research. And they said this was a big sort of turning point, and that's the first time they officially caved.

Chuck Bryant

Yeah.

Josh Clark

And again, this is while they're debating these bills in the Congress.

Chuck Bryant

Right. Chuck, I feel like we set things up pretty well for a break. Like, we deserve an ad.

Josh Clark

We deserve a break today. Let's do it.

Chuck Bryant

Okay.

Ben Nadette

Thirty years ago, an island off Manhattan almost brought down New York City.

Josh Clark

Who will you trust? Your friends and neighbors or will you trust the people five miles overseas.

Ben Nadette

This is a story about neighbors turning on each other and what happens when a forgotten place decides it's had enough.

Josh Clark

We reached for a feeling that exists in this city. But we're not stopping, are we?

Troy Millings

Ben

Ben Nadette

I'm Ben Nadifafry, and for my new series on revisionist history, I took a deep dive into Staten Island's attempt to secede from New York city in the 1990s and what it all has to do with the politics of resentment that dominate America today. Listen to Revisionist the Staten island problem on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Mangesha Tekidar

I'm Mangesha together and I'm back with a new season of the podcast Skyline Drive. This time I'm diving into a rabbit hole of peptides, organoids, blood boys, blue zones, and brain replacement to try to understand what this longevity obsession is all about and what it really means to live forever for all of us. I learned about some rad science.

Lele Pons

I can make a brain for you. And then we can test what drug is the best for your brain as opposed to his brain.

Mangesha Tekidar

Here are some hard truths.

Josh Clark

I would expect Indians to age faster, but I did not expect it to be almost a four to five year

Mangesha Tekidar

acceleration and get myself into a world of trouble.

Josh Clark

I'd say probably start bone smashing.

Chuck Bryant

That doesn't work.

Josh Clark

To make it look more defined, they say it works.

Chuck Bryant

I don't know.

Mangesha Tekidar

Listen to Skyline, how to Live Forever on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Rebecca Nagle

The Declaration, which is full of these beautifully rendered sentences and paragraphs about enlightenment ideals, does also have this darker history to it.

Stuff You Should Know Announcer

Why is it important for the darker part of the Declaration of Independence and the American Revolution? Why is it important that Americans know about it?

Rebecca Nagle

Well, if we don't understand the full context in which our nation was founded, we won't understand the full context in which our nation now finds itself.

Stuff You Should Know Announcer

I'm Rebecca Nagle. Gohin Dawadon, Jaleka Yatli Gela, citizen of Cherokee Nation.

Lele Pons

Are you guys big Chiefs fans?

Josh Clark

Hell yeah.

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This is First America, the true story of how the United States came to be and how we got to this present moment. Listen to First America on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

Chuck Bryant

Okay, so things are just kind of not going quite well because the whole thing was handed over from the states to Congress and Congress just fumbled it as they do. So some of the states went on and were like we're, we're going to just keep going and negotiating our own agreements with the tobacco companies. Florida, Minnesota, Mississippi, who had led the charge originally in the first place, and Texas, they all came up with their own settlements in like, pretty eye popping amounts. Texas got more than 17 and a half billion dollars out of their agreement. Minnesota got a nice chunk of change. But they also had the foresight to say, not only are you going to settle with money, part of this is that you have to disclose public records. All internal documents that are part of discovery in this process are going to be made public after this. And the tobacco companies had to agree with that. So that was where a lot of these disclosures came from, that they had just been lying, lying, lying, because these troves of documents that came up in discovery during these cases, just journalists went crazy. It was like a feeding frenzy on them.

Josh Clark

Oh, yeah, for sure. They saw the writing on the wall once again. So they got together with the other remaining states, who were all plaintiffs at this point in November of 1998, and agreed to what would end up being the Tabasco. Tabasco. The tobacco. Oh, man, the Tabasco settlement. Can you imagine the numbers? The Tobacco Master settlement agreement, the MSA, which would include $206 billion paid out over 25 years to 46 states, five territories in D.C. yeah. And they would allocate it according to, like, how many smokers they estimated each state had and how much it was still based on the Medicaid thing. So how much they had, you know, had to pay out in Medicaid for all these related costs. They said, well, also stop targeting minors, even though they really like to smoke, as it turns out. And they love cartoon camels. So no more cartoon characters in our ads. We're not gonna give away free cigarettes to minors at recess, which is crazy. We are gonna shut down these sort of shell research companies that are really just PR firms for us dissolving those. We're gonna release all these documents and. And we're gonna create a national foundation to address underage tobacco use and addiction. And we promise to care this time.

Chuck Bryant

Yeah, we're a newer, gentler loving tobacco company.

Josh Clark

That's right.

Chuck Bryant

They also created what's now known as the Truth Initiative, which is this whole teen anti smoking campaign that was funded originally by the tobacco companies.

Josh Clark

Those commercials were great.

Chuck Bryant

Yeah, they're still around. The Truth Initiative is. They seem to have migrated online. Surprising.

Josh Clark

Yeah, I'm sure.

Chuck Bryant

I mean, I guess that's where kids are these days or something.

Josh Clark

That's where the kids are.

Chuck Bryant

And so initially, this agreement was just before between these 46 states and territories in D.C. and the four largest tobacco companies, which represented the vast majority of the market share of the tobacco industry in the United states. Philip Morris, R.J. reynolds, Brown and Williamson and Lorillard.

Josh Clark

I'd only heard of two of those.

Chuck Bryant

Yeah, for sure. I've heard of the other ones, but I cannot tell you what they make.

Josh Clark

Okay, yeah, no idea.

Chuck Bryant

Let's just leave it at that.

Josh Clark

Maybe they make bucks. I remember. Yeah, I think we talked about bucks in the cigarettes episode, the Golden Pantry. Those are the ones that I think the rumor was, at least they were just made from the sweepings, the trimmings and sweepings up of factories. They would just package them as bucks.

Chuck Bryant

I'm quite sure that that is true to some degree. There's a kernel of truth in there. And there's probably kernels of something in those buck cigarettes too. Just about to say that. So a bunch of manufacturers were like, we don't need to take part in this. We didn't do that much damage. They're called non participating manufacturers. They were typically smaller players. I mean, if you weren't one of the big four, you were basically by definition one of the smaller players. But the states were like, not so fast. You still are going to have to pay money to us for each cigarette that you sell. And those smaller players, most of them were like, well, maybe we'll sign this master settlement agreement after all. So they really lassoed, like a lot of tobacco manufacturers into this, this whole agreement.

Josh Clark

Yeah. If you're wondering about dip, they had a different agreement, but it was still an agreement kind of under this banner with US Tobacco Company, which makes Skoll in Copenhagen. Did you ever dip at all?

Chuck Bryant

Yes, I did. One thing I never really did was chew. I tried it once and turned as green as you can get.

Josh Clark

Yeah, I chewed tobacco early on. We might have spoken about this when I was a youth group member at my church. It was pretty popular. So I chewed like Redman and Levi Garrett occasionally. And then here and there in college, I would dip with friends who dipped. But it never, like all nicotine never got its hooks in me, thankfully.

Chuck Bryant

Yeah, that is thankful, for sure. Cause once it does, it's hard to get rid of.

Josh Clark

Yeah, for sure. But one difference with the dip companies is they were given out. And I remember this was a big deal. They used to just give out reams of dip to minor league baseball and Major League Baseball. That's why baseball was. And other sports too. But Baseball was always associated with dipping, but they were like, you can't give this stuff away to, like, high school and college baseball teams anymore. And minor league baseball teams.

Chuck Bryant

Yeah, I think any sports team, because, like, kids look up to them. Right. Which is a big part of why they were doing this. So the sunflower seed companies rejoiced.

Josh Clark

Oh, for sure.

Chuck Bryant

So there was another thing that came up that was fairly unpopular, but also, I think people were just kind of what's not ambivalent, but where you're of two minds and you're kind of tussling over it internally. Yeah, the internal tussley, we'll call it $5.15 billion, went to the National Tobacco Growers Settlement Trust Fund to compensate tobacco farmers because they were going to sell a lot less tobacco because of this.

Josh Clark

It's interesting to think about.

Chuck Bryant

Yeah. Because you're like, on the one hand, who cares? It's tobacco. And then on the other, you're like, these are often family farmers who have been doing this for generations. So I kind of. Yeah, I'm tussling internally over it.

Josh Clark

What word is it? I know what you're talking about.

Chuck Bryant

Yeah, I don't know.

Josh Clark

I don't know. Someone write in.

Chuck Bryant

And then one other thing about this, too, that was part of the provision was people were like, well, what about the federal government? Because Medicaid is this joint state, federal partnership, and the feds fund a lot of this. And the feds are like, nope, we're leaving ourselves out. We're waiving any right to any of that money. This is the state's game, and they did a great job with it.

Josh Clark

Yeah, a lot of public health officials were like, not super happy about that because they were like, hey, listen, unless we have the feds overseeing this, how do we know what the states are going to use this money for? And not to tease too aggressively, but I think we'll see in Act 3 that that was very much a valid concern.

Chuck Bryant

Yeah, for sure. The feds did come after them, though. They. I think this was. They were secretly going to do this when they were like, no, no, we're just going to leave it to the states. And the tobacco companies are like, whoo. And the feds were like, we have our own thing we're about to do. There was us versus Philip Morris, et al, and they saw billions and billions of dollars in compensation for health care money that they had spent out, I guess basically what they had shelled out as part of the Medicaid program. They also went after them for RICO as racketeers and as being. If you're convicted of racketeering as an organization and you're allowed to continue on as an organization, the feds can basically garnish your profits for a very long time, or they can go back and seek previous profits. And they did. They wanted a portion of the company's profits from the past 45 years. In this case, that was launched in 1999.

Josh Clark

Yeah. And in the meantime, Phil Morris was like, hey, Phil Morris, et al, thanks a lot. Like, why? Why has it always gotta be us? They're like, you got a great name, Phil. So the companies did not settle this time. They were like, all right, we're getting bled dry by the states now the feds are coming after us. So we were gonna actually fight this thing. And they lost. In 2006, a district judge for the United States ruled for the doj, said, no, you guys are racketeers. I'm going to greatly reduce that financial penalty down to $10 billion from the hundreds they were asking for. But you know what? You got to admit to fraud. You have to issue what are called corrective statements. And we got to see all those documents because we know there are still more documents in your coffers.

Chuck Bryant

Yeah. I think there's something like 14 million documents that were eventually released. Internal documents.

Josh Clark

Yeah.

Chuck Bryant

And then finally, remember back as part of, like, that first settlement agreement that they tried to kick to the feds to ratify, that part of it was having the FDA start regulating tobacco. That was in 1998.

Josh Clark

Yeah.

Chuck Bryant

In 2009, the federal government finally got around to having the FDA regulate the tobacco industry.

Josh Clark

Yeah. All right, let's take our second break, and we'll come back and talk about what this all meant and means right after this.

Ben Nadette

Thirty years ago, an island off Manhattan almost brought down New York City.

Josh Clark

Who will you trust your friends and neighbors, or will you trust the people five miles overseas?

Ben Nadette

This is a story about neighbors turning on each other and what happens when a forgotten place decides it's had enough.

Josh Clark

We reached for a feeling that exists in this city, but we're not stopping, are we?

Ben Nadette

I'm Ben Nadette, and for my new series on revisionist history, I took a deep dive into Staten Island's attempt to secede from New York city in the 1990s, and what it all has to do with the politics of resentment that dominate America today. Listen to revisionist the Staten island problem on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Mangesha Tekidar

I'm mangesha Tekidar and I'm back with a new season of the podcast Skyline Drive. This time I'm diving into a rabbit hole of peptides, organoids, blood boys, blue zones and brain replacement to try to understand what this longevity obsession is all about and what it really means to live forever for all of us. I learned about some rad science.

Lele Pons

I can make a brain for you and then we can test what drug is the best for your brain as opposed to his brain.

Mangesha Tekidar

Here are some hard truths.

Josh Clark

I would expect Indians to age faster, but I did not expect it to be almost a four to five year

Mangesha Tekidar

acceleration and get myself into a world of trouble.

Josh Clark

I'd say probably start bone smashing.

Chuck Bryant

That doesn't work.

Stuff You Should Know Announcer

Make it look more defined.

Josh Clark

They say it works.

Chuck Bryant

I don't know.

Mangesha Tekidar

Listen to Skyline Drive how to live Forever on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Rebecca Nagle

The Declaration, which is full of these beautifully rendered, you know, sentences and paragraphs about enlightenment ideals, does also have this

Josh Clark

darker history to it.

Stuff You Should Know Announcer

Why is it important for the darker part of the Declaration of Independence and the American Revolution? Why is it important that Americans know about it?

Rebecca Nagle

Well, if we don't understand the full context in which our nation was founded, we won't understand the full context in which our nation now finds itself.

Stuff You Should Know Announcer

I'm Rebecca Nagle. Gohin tawa Don Jalakayetli, Que lan citizen of Cherokee Nation.

Chuck Bryant

Are you guys big Chiefs fans?

Josh Clark

Hell yeah.

Stuff You Should Know Announcer

This is First America, the true story of how the United States came to be and how we got to this present moment. Listen to First America on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

Josh Clark

All right, we promised talk of what it all meant and means. And it kind of depends on who you ask or when you ask as well. Because when it happened enact the effective National Action to Control Tobacco group said, you know what? And I think other people too, like American Cancer Society, the American Psychological association, they all got together and said, you know what, this isn't so great. Like that McCain bill really had teeth and that didn't passed and we really wanted it to. So this is sort of a win for the cigarette companies. It had a lot of like, obvious immediate impacts. And you know, I talked about, you know, why cigarettes are so expensive now. This is partially why, because they're. What's not going to happen is the investors aren't going to lose any money. So they're going to say like, well, just start jacking up cigarette costs and a Lot less people are smoking. So let's jack them up even more because we're not gonna take a loss on this. Yeah.

Chuck Bryant

What are they gonna do, Quit?

Josh Clark

Yeah. So that started almost immediately. As far as price hiking, like 45, 50 cents a pack right out of the gate was just the tip of the iceberg.

Chuck Bryant

Yeah. I mean, did you say $20 a pack? I believe it, but that's still eye popping.

Josh Clark

I think a smoker told me they were like 20 bucks in New York, but I haven't verified that.

Chuck Bryant

So one of the things that really happened that people point to the MSA as being directly responsible for is that, like, the youth smoking just dropped precipitously.

Josh Clark

Yeah.

Chuck Bryant

Once they removed the ability for tobacco companies to market directly to kids and they simultaneously had anti smoking campaigns targeted towards kids, it really had an effect, like you said, went from like 34% to 3.8% in 2021. I think it's even lower than that now. The problem is we didn't learn anything that or we didn't leave it open enough to apply to future kinds of tobacco that hadn't been around. So companies like Juul and other E cigarette and vape companies, they're. They don't face these same regulations. So they can basically market to kids. They can use celebrity endorsers, and they do, but they still get sued a lot. I think Juul paid out 462 million to six different states in 2023. So it's still going on. But that's been a huge dent in the incredible success of the curbing teen smoking. It's gone back up if you include vaping and hookahs and stuff like that. But I have also the impression that kids are a little smarter than we were at that age, and they are seeing through a lot of this. And it's not working quite as well as it did on us in the 90s.

Josh Clark

Yeah. And, you know, more parental oversight and just there's a lot of factors for sure. On the E Cigs. I think their day has come a little bit, but I think that it's really. They're in for some bad stuff moving forward because of just all the stuff that goes into that juice, you know?

Chuck Bryant

Yeah. Yeah. We took a pretty solid stand or position on vaping. I think we were. If I remember correctly, we were opposed to it in our episode on vaping.

Josh Clark

That's right. The other thing that the settlements led to was just a turning of the tide, not just with kids smoking, but smoking in general, which was what they were after was like, let's just try and get smoking way down overall. And individual states started enacting bans. I think in 98, Utah and California were the first and only ones to say, like, hey, you can't smoke in restaurants anymore, you can't smoke in public places. Secondhand smoke is a real thing. And most states have these bans in place now. And people just generally look at smoking differently. Like, you know, when someone lights up in public, I guess unless you're in Philadelphia, there are a lot of people now that will look sort of like, what are you doing, dude? Who still does that?

Chuck Bryant

Exactly. Or when you flick a cigarette filter out the window when you're done with it.

Josh Clark

Sorry, I just went to a dark place.

Chuck Bryant

No, I'm with you. I understand.

Josh Clark

So upsetting. Especially when one flicks off your windshield and you see a spark bounce.

Chuck Bryant

Well, that's kind of.

Josh Clark

Well, just briefly, yes.

Chuck Bryant

So there was a lot of success directly from the master settlement agreement. Let's talk about the problems with the master settlement agreement because a lot of people are like, this could have been done better. We should have done the McCain bill. Right. And then really importantly, there were only a couple of states that had the foresight to designate the payments from the, the master settlement agreement from the tobacco companies that are made annually in perpetuity. I hadn't realized this. There's no end date to these payments, as far as I know, which I don't fully understand because I think they settled on like an actual number. Right. So that doesn't quite make sense to me. But I've seen in multiple places that these are in perpetuity payments.

Josh Clark

Yeah. The only thing I can figure out there is they're like, hey, you're still selling cigarettes and this is still a problem for Medicaid. So it's not like that's ever going to stop. That's the only thing I could figure out.

Chuck Bryant

Yeah, I've got that. I get that too. I think that that's probably it. That's the best argument for it. But then does that mean that their ultimate payouts are going to exceed the hundreds of billions of dollars that they agreed to pay out to the states over 25 years? That's the part I don't get. But the problem is that the states, very few states actually said this money is designated for anti smoking programs to pay for health care for smokers or to repay public costs for health care that we spend on smokers. A lot of states don't do that. And in fact, most of the States use it to fill budget gaps, to build new roads. If they're strapped, they do something called securitization, where they sell bonds against their future annual payment from the tobacco companies. Did you see that?

Josh Clark

Yeah, yeah. That's kind of, you know, it's a shell game with the government in a way. In a lot of ways, I think.

Chuck Bryant

Yeah, because not only are they. I mean, it's just unseemly in the first place, but secondly, when those bonds come due, when they get that master settlement agreement annual payment to the state, they have to pay out not just the face value of the bonds that they sold. They have to use some of that money to pay the interest, too. So the state's getting less than it would have if it didn't sell those bonds ahead of time. Right. So I think that's a sign of poor management of a state, typically, if you ask me.

Josh Clark

Yeah, for sure. I think in the end, less than 3% of these funds have gone to smoking prevention and cessation programs, which was a lot of the reason they initially said they were going to do this. And I think no state has funded anti tobacco programs at CDC recommended levels at all.

Chuck Bryant

Right. And some states even use them to help the tobacco industry. I know North Carolina, oh man, they spent $45 billion, I think, on modernizing tobacco farms. Not, hey, here's money for your losses. I think I said 45 billion. 45 million.

Josh Clark

42 million.

Chuck Bryant

42 million. Not like, here's some money to compensate you for your losses. Here's some money to get better at tobacco farming for the future. That's what North Carolina spent some of its money on.

Josh Clark

Yeah, I think North Carolina, big tobacco state, Obviously, they used 75% of their settlement funds for tobacco production.

Chuck Bryant

That's crazy.

Josh Clark

Some of that to private tobacco producers like you talked about, that had taken a hit. But also, yeah, like you said, like, hey, you want a tobacco museum? We'll build it with that money.

Lele Pons

Right.

Chuck Bryant

And if we build it, they will come. The tobacco company.

Josh Clark

Oh, man, that's hard to believe on that one.

Chuck Bryant

There's another thing too. The tobacco companies haven't exactly paid out all this money. They were supposed to pay out the couple hundred, I think, what was it, 300 something billion dollars over 25 years as part of the settlement in 1998, they have paid out, according to a press release from Vermont attorney general office, 175 billion. So I think less than half of what they said. And it's been a lot longer than 25 years now. Right. And One of the reasons why is because as part of the agreement, the tobacco companies. There are two calculations that have to be taken into account. There has to be an inflation calculation that adjusts for inflation so that the states are getting their actual value of the dollars that the tobacco companies agreed to. That makes sense. There's also a sales formula that they have to calculate every year to take into account the amount of profits that they're losing to companies that aren't part of the master settlement agreement and therefore aren't hamstrung by those payments. Which means that in some cases, some years, there have been. The sales calculation has been larger than the inflation calculation. Right. So the states have shouldered the. The burden of competition for these tobacco companies. Like the states took on that loss for the tobacco companies, which is just disgusting to me.

Josh Clark

Yeah. And, you know, when you just think about what's happened with the raising the cost of cigarettes, there's a lot of people that look at the settlement of like, well, now you're just getting like, the tobacco companies aren't paying states. Like, people who still smoke cigarettes are just funneling money through the tobacco companies to the states.

Chuck Bryant

Yeah, that's a great way to put it. Okay, Chuck. So one of the other things, the legacies of the master settlement agreement is it created a blueprint, I think you said this kind of early on, for other ways that states could get together and create real change against corporate malfeasance. Specifically, again, in cases where there is harm that comes directly from using a product as directed or intended. Right. Not abusing it or something, you're just using it like it's supposed to be used, and you're being harmed. So you have things like social media, opioids. Climate change is a trickier one, but fast food. And the reason why also they fit this master settlement agreement framework is these companies are following, like, a lot of the same techniques that the tobacco industry laid down starting back in the 50s.

Josh Clark

Yeah. It's interesting because there are two playbooks. On the one side, you have the government now. That's like, all right, now we got a playbook moving forward so we can sue. Meta about social media and the harms to children and the fact that they know they're targeting children and harming children, or opioids, of course, with the pharmaceutical companies. But then there's that other playbook like you were talking about, where they end up getting sued. But Meta and the pharmaceutical companies were like, hey, you know what? If we can get kids hooked on this stuff and market to children, then we can make a lot more money for our investors.

Chuck Bryant

Yeah. A good example of that, not necessarily targeting children, but of just this completely screwing up the narrative for their own gain at the expensive people's lives. The opioid pharmaceutical industry with opioids basically floated this idea called pseudo addiction to where the people who were supposedly addicted to opioids weren't actually addicted. What was happening is that their pain wasn't being managed adequately. That's why they needed to take more and were going around from doctor to doctor. And the answer, the solution was to up their dose. Don't cut them off, don't put them in treatment, up their dose. That's what they really need. Because it's not real addiction, because you can't get addicted to opioids. They actually publicly said stuff like that. And I mean, that's cause to go after them alone, you know?

Josh Clark

Yeah. I mean. Yeah. Just as despicable as any of these huge corporations sort of issuing these really flimsy denials that the public just. It just makes them look worse, you know, the public doesn't buy this stuff.

Chuck Bryant

Yeah, it's true. Now, I think we did before. Yeah, you know.

Josh Clark

Yeah, you're probably right.

Chuck Bryant

You got anything else?

Josh Clark

I got nothing else. That's.

Chuck Bryant

This is. We gotta.

Josh Clark

Yeah. I feel like this is in a suite of episodes we've done over the years. Josh and Chuck take on the world, big industry.

Chuck Bryant

Well, Chuck doesn't have anything else. Chuck said the world, and I said big industry. So that combination obviously previously unlocked listener mail.

Josh Clark

Hey, guys. Amongst my favorite things, and that's favorite with an ou. So I think I know where Rebecca is from, or at least, you know, one of a few places she could be from. One of my favorite things about stuff you should know is Josh's jokes that don't land. Wow. All right. Absolutely hates my jokes that don't land, by the way. So you should feel good. Did she say that? And counting how many. No, no, no.

Chuck Bryant

Okay.

Josh Clark

And counting how many times Chuck says that's right in an episode. I guess I feel like I say sure more than that's right.

Chuck Bryant

But you say for sure, for sure.

Josh Clark

Yeah, for sure.

Chuck Bryant

But just one time I was adding a for sure to the first for sure.

Josh Clark

For sure. My absolute favorite thing, though, guys, has to be the interlude jingles before and after.

Chuck Bryant

Yeah.

Josh Clark

I love how the jingle always matches the. The theme of the show. For example, the short stuff on the benefits of singing in a group. Had the barbershop quartet episode about Shakespeare. Had the green sleeve style jingle in Schoolhouse Rock had the Queen style jingle. My favorite one might have been the techno punk jingles on the Cyberpunk episode, which was fantastic. All that to say Shout out to Jerry and the folks who produced these. They are appreciated. And Rebecca, I'm glad you brought this up. We said it a lot over the years, but it always bears repeating that, you know, these are written by Stuff youf Should Know listers and produced and performed and we just get these and people are like, hey, use this thing. I made it as a love letter to the show. And then Jerry does a great job of selecting the episodes where it has a nice fit. So we always like reiterating this is how it works. And Rebecca sends kindest regards and a P.S. shout out to Rebecca's twin sister Lauren, who introduced Rebecca to Stuff youf Should Know many years ago and they have been regularly discussing episodes weekly since.

Chuck Bryant

That's awesome. Yeah. Thank you. We love it when a family member or friend turns somebody on to stuff you should Know and then they end up talking about it or listening together. That's kind of the point.

Josh Clark

That's how a community is formed.

Chuck Bryant

Everybody also shout out to Dave and Ben too, who also do a pretty boss job of selecting jingles. But I. I think Jerry's probably the goat.

Josh Clark

Agreed.

Chuck Bryant

If you want to be like Rebecca and by proxy Lauren and get in touch with us via email, all you have to do is send it off to stuffpodcastsiheartradio.com.

Stuff You Should Know Announcer

Stuff youf Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts My Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Troy Millings

This is Troy Millings from Earn your Leisure. When you think about discovering small brands, what store pops in your mind? Well, it should be Walmart. Seriously. Walmart has thousands of small brands and they're all in one place. Just go online or in store, discover and shop. It could not be easier. Every one of these brands has a real story and real people behind it. They're true American success stories and you can find them all at Walmart. Discover thousands of small brands@walmart.com today.

Lele Pons

My first guest is Paris Hilton, Shakira, Luke and Yerim.

Chuck Bryant

You have surprises, many surprises.

Lele Pons

Welcome to the Sweet 305 podcast where the group chat comes to life. What up? You're the only person I know that loves a yellow starburst lemonade. This is Sweet Suite 305. Here, oversharing is encouraged. Listen to Suite 305 with Lele Pons on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Raiders of the Lost Podcast Host

On Raiders of the Lost Podcast, we explore cinema like no one else, including huge interviews with stars like Ryan Gosling on Project Hail Mary.

Josh Clark

It was like the Jaws shark didn't always work, came with its own problems. That's what made it great.

Raiders of the Lost Podcast Host

The cast of Obsession on set.

Josh Clark

There was so much magic happening with each scene.

Raiders of the Lost Podcast Host

We were putting together deep dives into classics like 2001 A Space Odyssey or Fight Club, plus weekly episodes on all industry news. Listen to Raiders of the Lost podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And for more, follow at Raiders of the Lost podcast and at TikTok podcast network on TikTok.

Josh Clark

This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.