Plaintiff lawyers have tried to put the focus solely on the behavior of the manufacturers, in order to avoid the messy question of whether consumers believed advertising that was directly contradicted by the warning on each pack of cigarettes from the U.S. Surgeon General warning them the product could kill them.
The big and most effective step -- outlawing cigarettes on the grounds that they undeniably, in the long run, sicken and kill the people who smoke them, and those around them -- is not going to happen.