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From: C-afp@clari.net (AFP)
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Subject: French social security to sue tobacco companies
Organization: Copyright 1999 by Agence France-Presse (via ClariNet)
Message-ID: <Qfrance-tobaccoUReBx_9FH@clari.net>
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Date: Wed, 17 Feb 1999 6:46:26 PST
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   SAINT-NAZAIRE, France, Feb 17 (AFP) - A unit of French social  
security has decided to sue tobacco companies for compensation for 
the sums it spends on caring for the victims of smoking-related 
diseases. 
   In the first such move in France by the country's health  
insurance providers, officials of the social security fund in this 
western French port said they would sue the four main companies 
supplying 90 percent of the French market -- France's Seita, US 
giants Philip Morris and Reynolds Tobacco and Britain's Rothmans. 
   Pierre Rousseau, head of the Saint-Nazaire social security fund  
and its president, Guy Couillaud, said it was their duty to seek 
reparations from those responsible for the "considerable financial 
cost of this health scourge." 
   Rousseau said that disease from smoking cost his organisation  
about 50 million francs (one million dollars) a year and that the 
money from compensation would be used to strengthen prevention 
campaigns. 
   The move has not been followed by French social security at  
national level and on Wednesday, Martine Aubry, minister for 
solidarity, was cool to the initiative. 
   Speaking on French radio, she said it was an American-style move  
and "I believe the important thing is not so much to recover some 
money as to try to avoid deaths." 
   Aubry said she preferred to dissuade smokers by increasing the  
price of tobacco. 
   The minister recalled that the Socialist government had bumped  
up the price of cigarettes, "notably the price of roll-up tobacco to 
persuade young people not to start smoking." 
   She said "I prefer this method but I have not yet studied the  
Saint-Nazaire proposal." 
   In the latest in a series of lawsuits in the United States, a  
San Francisco jury last week ordered Philip Morris to pay 51.5 
million dollars to an ex-smoker with lung cancer, the largest award 
ever to an individual in a tobacco liability case. 
   The company was ordered to pay 50 million dollars in punitive  
damages in addition to 1.5 million dollars in compensatory damages 
to Patricia Henley, of California, who began smoking when she was 
15. 
   In France, where smoking among young people, especially girls,  
has escalated in recent years, measures to curb smoking in public 
places voted into law in the 1980s, have been largely ignored. 
  	   	

