NPR

In Ads, Tobacco Companies Admit They Made Cigarettes More Addictive

A federal judge ordered tobacco companies to pay for ads warning that their products are deadly and that they manipulated them to be addictive. But the form of the ads may be dulling their effect.
Advertisements paid for by tobacco companies say their products are deadly and were manipulated to be more addictive.

If you read a newspaper on Sunday, there's a good chance you came across a full-page ad warning of the dangers of smoking.

The stark messages with black text on an otherwise blank page tell readers that cigarettes kill 1,200 Americans every day. The same messages start to run Monday evening on prime time television.

The ads are more than a decade in the making. They're the result of a 2006 in a lawsuit filed by the federal government that found that cigarette makers deliberately misled the public But experts in public health say they may not be all that effective.

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