Tobacco
Marketing Restrictions
The following is a summary of the extensive restrictions on the sale and promotion of cigarettes and tobacco products included in the November 16, 1998 multi-state tobacco settlement:
- Bans use of cartoons in advertising, marketing and packaging
- Restricts brand name sponsorships
- Bans all outdoor advertising, including billboard ads, and restricts the size of outdoor signs at retail establishments
- Bans payment for product placement (in addition to movies) in television shows, theatrical performances, live theater, recorded performances, and video games
- Restricts distribution of free samples to adult only facilities
- Requires proof of age for distribution of free gifts
- Restricts the third party use of brand names in ways that violate the Agreement and requires industry to enforce their trademark
- Bans the use of nationally recognized brand names as names of future tobacco products
- Establishes a minimum pack size of 20 cigarettes until December 31, 2001
- Corporate culture changes including commitment to assist in the reduction of youth smoking
- Dissolves the Tobacco Institute
- Restricts lobbying against laws that limit non-tobacco products that look like tobacco products (bubble gum)
- Mandates that future trade associations do not act like those of the past
- Establishes a user-friendly searchable website of all industry produced documents
- Establishes a National Foundation to study youth smoking ($250 million) and a counter advertising fund of at least $1.45 billion
- Establishes a $50 million enforcement fund with National Association of Attorneys General
The Project SCUM Marketing Campaign
In 1997 in the California tobacco litigation, Lieff Cabraser served document requests on R.J. Reynolds seeking their current marketing data for Red Kamel. After months of litigation, R.J. Reynolds finally produced the documents. Inside the scores of boxes of documents produced and reviewed was the Project SCUM document.
The document showed that R.J. Reynolds targeted San Francisco area gay and homeless communities for special marketing efforts in the mid-1990s. The plan was labeled "Project SCUM" for "Subculture Urban Marketing."
Not only is the document offensive because it reveals targeting of the homeless and gay communities, it also used the code words "rebellious" and "Generation X" which allegedly referred to youth targeting. In late 2002, the American Legacy Foundation launched a public awareness campaign concerning Project SCUM, and set up a website for the campaign: www.projectscum.org.
Read a copy of the Project SCUM document (in Adobe Acrobat format).
About Lieff Cabraser
Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, LLP is a fifty-plus attorney law firm that has represented plaintiffs nationwide since 1972. We have offices in San Francisco, New York and Nashville. We represent plaintiffs in class and group actions and in individual lawsuits in cases involving substantial losses. For the last six years, the National Law Journal has selected Lieff Cabraser as one of the top plaintiffs' law firms in the nation.
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