The 13th World Conference on Tobacco OR Health

Sharply criticized that it does not go nearly far enough in curbing tobacco advertising, marketing and promotion and despite continuing concerns that it spawned a much too cozy, even symbiotic, relationship between the states and the tobacco industry, has the tobacco Master Settlement Agreement changed tobacco industry conduct in any substantial way? And, more importantly, has it helped reduce youth smoking or otherwise promoted the public health? This presentation will examine the major MSA enforcement efforts by attorneys general since 1998 and show how vigorous and sustained enforcement of its terms can be an instrument for progress in tobacco control. Criticism of the MSA and concerns about states becoming addicted to MSA payments, many of them valid, can and should serve as a reality-check for state enforcers, motivating them to make the MSA a living body of law. In the hands of determined, aggressive attorneys general, the MSA has been, and can be in the future, a powerful legal tool to curb tobacco industry behavior.