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Despite signing deals with Florida for US $11.3 billion and Mississippi for US $3.4 billion, tobacco companies in the US said that they would fight the US $14 billion lawsuit in the state of Texas. They said that they would cut no more deals by paying individual states for the treatment of sick smokers. The trial will be first pitting the industry against one of the 41 states that have filed lawsuits seeking to recoup the Medicaid costs of treating patients with smoking-related illnesses.

President Bill Clinton, on the other hand, is leaving no stone unturned to introduce tough modifications in the proposed US $386.5 billion tobacco settlement. He is expected to call for changes to ensure that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has unquestioned authority to regulate nicotine as a drug. He is also seeking harsher penalties on the industry if the targets in the agreement for reducing youth smoking are not met ( Down To Earth , Vol 6, No 9).

But the real trouble seems to be brewing elsewhere. The attorney general of the state of Minnesota, Hubert H Humphrey III is the most outspoken critic of the tobacco settlement. He is joined by members of the US Congress and several health groups who hope to kill the settlement, or at least to strengthen its health provisions as the pact goes through the Congress in the coming weeks.

A case in the state of Minnesota, seeking to recover the cost of caring for Medicad patients suffering from smoking-related illnesses, is slated to go to trial on January 19 next year. It now seems very difficult for the Congress to finish work on that deal by then. But if Humphrey goes to trial first, he will do precisely what the industry had hoped to avoid by settling in Florida and Mississippi: an ugly trial with massive negative publicity. And that could be a new ball game altogether.

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