Anti-Tobacco Legislation Experienced New Modifications

Starting with 2007 anti-smoking researchers started to recognize the cause-and-effect of relationship between smoking and cancer. They showed a renewed interest in the issue among a growing public awareness over the harmful effects of smoking.

This legal battle against smoking cigarettes dates back to 1999 when a group of lung cancer patients and confused families filed a damages appeal against KT&G, Korea’s largest tobacco company by sales volume.

The fight took the court eight years for to achieve the conclusion that smoking can cause lung cancer but refused a demand for compensation, saying that it couldn’t be thought that other factors excepts smoking had caused their suffering.

Today, the families and smoking victims, supported by a group of lawyers, are changing their direction, requiring that KT&G uses additives to make cigarettes more addictive and so more difficult to quit it.

For the first time, the presiding judge in the appeal case visited the KT&G factory to conduct an on-site inspection.

There have been some direct legislation made in favor of heavy smokers with lung cancer, but it has not been the case in Korea.

For example, the first ruling, handed down back in January 2007, supported the tobacco maker, saying that the complainants’ allegation that smoking was merely to censure for their lung cancer was causeless.

At that time, researchers admitted that there was interdependence between smoking and the plaintiffs’ illness, but discharged their compensation require, saying that there is no testimonies to prove that the lung and laryngeal cancers of the plaintiffs were directly caused by smoking.

But Bae Keum-ja, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, explained that the cigarettes additives are the main cause for smokers’ addiction.

He reported: “A cigarette contains hundreds of additives to get smokers addicted to smoking faster and make it more difficult to quit. In the first controlling, the court took cigarettes as a product made in usual way, putting dried tobacco leaves on a piece of paper and rolling it up, and that those with a strong will can quit smoking. But it’s not true at all.”
Mr. Bae claimed that KT&G mixes nearly 600 chemical additives with tobacco leaves in order to get smokers addicted faster and make it harder to quit.

KT&G confessed that a cigarette is made up of tobacco leaves and chemical additives, but contradicted Bae’s justification, saying that the unnatural substances have nothing to do with addiction.